Category: leukemia
-
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…
-
“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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Breathe….
George received a notification today from Dr. Loren’s office asking him to confirm his upcoming appointment on Monday, the 21st of November. Wait, what? His appointment is on the 23rd! So we logged into the MyPenn account and saw that his appointment had been changed to the 21st (thanks for the heads up, yo) and…
-
Phone Consult with the Doc
George’s doctor called this morning to discuss the drop in his chimerism numbers. She said she was very surprised to see it as well. She said the drop poses two concerns: Dr. Loren has already reached out to George’s bone marrow donor to ask for another collection of marrow cells, which she said takes at…
-
I’m sorry to report…
George got the results back from the chimerism test he had done last Wednesday. We expected to see his donor percentages go up since he had been tapering off his tacrolimus. So we were stunned to see that two of the three values they check had dropped and dropped significantly. His CD3 % actually went…
Diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). A Journey 