Beth is getting some blisters on the edges of her hands and feet — it seems as if these are nascent signs of graft vs host. We’ve been told that skin rashes are one of three distinct signs of graft vs host disease. While this sort of thing is annoying to her, it also represents signs that the immunity of the new bone marrow (and blood) that’s growing inside of her are perceiving that any signs of her old, leukemic bone marrow, are “enemy” and are being targeted, destroyed, an “mopped up” with the precision that God gave to human immune systems.
This is the third wave of medical science hitting her disease, the first being the chemotherapy, and the second being the total body radiation. Our hope now is that the symptoms on the outside don’t become too maddening, while fully enabling the work on the inside. And this was the point of all the HLA matching as we looked for a donor. The magic work in “tweaking” the “graft vs leukemia” was done months ago.
