Tag: bone marrow
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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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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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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…
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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…
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I’m happy to report….

2) At the visit with Dr. Loren two weeks ago, George was told he only had to do his magnesium infusion every other day, which was great! Yesterday, he was told he can stop all together! No more infusions! 3) After reducing the tacrolimus a bit, George’s chimerism numbers came up! Since then, he has…
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Little Pink Pills

Ok, so maybe they are more like peach or salmon colored. They are called gilteritinib (Xospata) and they are used to as a targeted therapy against the FLT3 mutation in leukemia patients. I talked a little about FLT3 in my previous post, but as a refresher, people who have AML with certain FLT3 mutations often have aggressive…
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One Pink Tennis Ball

On Tuesday of this week, George had his 100 day post-transplant bone marrow biopsy (even though he was only 95 days post-transplant). Everything went well and when he was wheeled back into the recovery room, he was OUT. He slept until it was time to leave. No graham crackers and juice for this guy! Before…