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Bone Marrow Biopsy #3
Yesterday, March 28 we drove out to UPenn in Philadelphia for George’s scheduled bone marrow biopsy. He has had two previous biopsies at Cooper hospital, but said this experience was different. At Cooper, he was hospitalized when he had them so of course it was different in that respect. This time his biopsy was done…
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A Birthday
In the midst of all the doctor appointments, lab work, tele-health consultations, colonoscopy prep, and office work, we stopped to celebrate George’s 58th birthday. I can’t adequately express in words how thankful I am that this man was born and that our paths crossed so that I may have had the extreme privilege and joy…
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What a Busy Week!
Now that we have decided that George will have his bone marrow transplant at UPenn, there is much to do to get him ready, as well as keeping him on the path to healing and staying in remission. On Monday, the home health nurse from Bayada came by and looked at George’s wound on his…
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BMT Consult #2- The Hospital at University of Pennsylvania
George’s second bone marrow transplant consultation appointment was with Dr. Loren at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. We didn’t really learn any new information. There are some differences in the way UPenn and Jefferson approach the transplant process. One notable difference is that Jefferson will use half matches, while UPenn strives for full…
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BMT Consult #1 – Jefferson University Hospital
On March 11, we drove out to meet with Dr. Wagner at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia for a bone marrow transplant (BMT) consultation. The first thing that happened was George had his blood drawn, of course. This was done to get George’s blood type and to check for anti-HLA antibodies. If the antibody count…
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A New Dilemma
In my last post, I wrote about our dilemma of having to make the decision to meet with a bone marrow transplant team at a new hospital we had never heard of, or waiting almost two months to meet with the team at UPenn, our first choice of hospitals. We ended up choosing the new…
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The Dilemma
During the first hospitalization, George had the bone marrow biopsy to get the initial diagnosis of AML and then we had to wait a couple more weeks for the “molecular” data to come back. That would show which actual mutations on his chromosomes were linked to the onset of his leukemia. The news we got…
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The Leg, Part Deux?
George has a wound/stitches on the back of his leg from the surgery he underwent before starting chemo. It is the reason he has been staying in the hospital rather than going home after the 5 days of chemo as originally planned. Everything was going well. His leg did hurt a bit, which was to…
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Consolidation & the Nadir
February 9, 2022. George was now back in the hospital after spending a week at home. He was supposed to start his consolidation chemo right away, but there was still some concern about his leg. It was still painful to stand on and to touch. Dr. Ghimire had expressed concern about it during our meeting…
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Going home
On February 1, we got the good news that George was going to be discharged and could go home! It was a long month of driving back and forth to Camden for me and a long month being away from home for George. At first, George was a little scared to leave the hospital because…