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Cycle One Complete
George has completed his first regimen of chemotherapy. For seven days, he drove to Philadelphia (about an hour’s drive) to get his infusion of Vidaza. Since I am working at H&R Block during this tax season, he had to go alone for the first time. But, he did great, as I knew he would. Now…
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“It’s Starting….”
George was sitting in his recliner on Monday evening when he got a notification that his lab results from earlier in the day were available on the UPenn portal. He gets blood drawn every Monday by the nurse from Penn Home infusion that comes to the house. The results showed that his white blood cell…
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BM biopsy results…
….were not what we were hoping for. In addition, the DLI did nothing to boost his chimerism numbers. He only has 2% donor cells in his bone marrow. Today is 223 post transplant, almost 7 months after transplant. We so thought George would be getting his first round of childhood vaccines last month, but that…
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New Mutations and a Broken Chromosome
Well, this is not what I thought I would be writing about 208 days after George’s bone marrow transplant. We are supposed to be on the other side of this disease. But his engraftment has been struggling and when we saw Dr. Loren on January 26th, we got some surprising news. George’s early January appointment…
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More Info on DLI…(whew)
I was snooping around the internet and checking with Dr. google and found an article that had the following information: After a stem cell transplant, a patient’s chimerism will be measured on a regular basis. It tells doctors how much of your bone marrow is from the donor and should be as near to 100%…
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DLI Day
George went in for his DLI (donor leukocyte infusion) on Wednesday, December 14. We were under the impression that the purpose was to boost the percentage of George’s donor cells….to get the low counts back up with more donor cells. However, we were slowly realizing that wasn’t the case. Waiting in the aphaeresis unit, while…
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A Window
George had a visit with Dr. Loren earlier this week. When we were taken from the waiting room back to the cavernous hall of offices, we were told to go to room 6. Well, we did that and we found the door shut and we could hear voices inside the office. George went back to…
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Next Up: DLI
Donor lymphocyte infusion (or DLI) is the infusion (transfer) of a bone marrow transplant donor’s leukocytes into a recipient’s body. We got a call from Dr. Loren’s office telling George there was a date for the infusion of donor cells – Wednesday, December 14. This was great news! Rachel, the bone marrow transplant coordinator said the…
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Still in Remission!
Yesterday, we got the news we had been waiting and hoping for – no signs of leukemia in the bone marrow! I received this text from George while I was out walking our dog, Chloe – So, what is that chromosomal type stuff results we were waiting for?? Got the results this morning! So much…
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Bone Marrow Biopsy #6
Yesterday, George met with Dr Loren at 9:00 am. She asked if her intern could sit in and we said sure! We were hoping she would be able to explain what caused the drop in George’s chimerism numbers, but she really couldn’t. She said the donor cells may be weak. So, if he gets a…
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Diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). A Journey 