We got back from the doctor’s appointment just a bit ago. There’s good news … Beth’s levels are rising back up (although still “suppressed”). The level of “blasts” in her bone marrow is back to normal.
The real significance of this is that she hasn’t progressed into aggressive leukemia. When we started, her marrow level of blasts was around 15%, and one of the primary goals of the treatment was to simply prevent her from advancing into AML leukemia (20%). The fact that that level is back to 4% (5% is the normal level) is probably the best news of all.
Though, the doctor says he can’t yet use the words “partial remission,” because while the level of blasts in her marrow is down, and while the Vidaza is suppressing the bad stuff, it is also keeping counts on the good cells low, too.
So they’ve reduced her Vidaza a bit — they think that was the reason for her low blood counts is because the Vidaza is working a bit too well and suppressing not only the bad stuff, but the good stuff. So instead of getting 100 [whatever the units are] five days, she’s getting 75 [units a day] over seven days. The hope is, that will be a bit easier on her.
They still haven’t found a donor. They have six potential 10/10 donors. But she’s got an unusual string of DNA at a pretty important point. So whoever the donor is, isn’t going to be ideal.
I still haven’t digested all of this, and I still haven’t looked at the marrow results and the recent blood tests. But anyone who knows me (and that I post most things very early in the morning) knows that for now, it’s about time for me to be being brain dead.
But I wanted to put this up tonight, because, on balance, it was a very positive appointment.
