The Transplant Becomes a Bit More Urgent
So, on June 10, everything had changed. It looked like a bone marrow transplant was going to be needed in the following 6 months or so. My hemoglobin count fell below 10 for the first time (it went from 11.1 on 6/1 to 9.8 on 6/10), my WBC was at .9, and my platelet count had actually risen to 60 from 38. Two weeks later, on June 24, I had another CBC and the counts had all dropped to their lowest ever – WBC at .8, platelets at 30, and hemoglobin at 9.5.
My hematologist, Dr. H was clearly a bit alarmed at the apparent acceleration in the decline of the blood counts, and said he would like to push or prepone (it’s an actual word meaning to schedule for an earlier time as opposed to postpone) my transplant to happen by the end of July. This was hard to hear at first. While I knew a bone marrow transplant was in the near future, facing it in only weeks made it a lot more real. After chewing on it for a while, I realized that sooner was better than later for a lot of reasons. First, there’s less waiting. Also, for my wife who teaches fourth grade and my son who’s planning to go into the Peace Corps in January, an earlier transplant means that by the time school starts and certainly by January, I should be home from the hospital and we’ll have some idea of how well the transplant took.
Dr. H said there are two places in the Philadelphia area where bone marrow transplants are done – at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in downtown Philadelphia and at the Temple – Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC) in Northeast Philadelphia. He says he has worked with both places and they are both good. I decided that I wanted to visit and have initial consultations with both places so I could make a choice based on something, so I set up appointments for the following Monday and Tuesday (6/28 and 29).
Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a disease of older people. Most people are over 70 years old when they contract the disease and approximately 90% of those who get the disease are 60 or older. This is significant because the only treatment known that can cure it is a bone marrow transplant and these are rarely done in people over 55 years old. I am 52 years old, so I’m still a candidate.
I wondered whether my disease is considered cancer since I have a malignant growth of cells, and if it is not cancer, why is it not. Dr. H explained that cancer involves tumors of some sort. Leukemia is not a cancer. It has something to do with body parts that constantly renew themselves (like blood) and those that don’t (like lungs, bones, breasts, prostates, etc.). By definition, I don’t have leukemia because the blasts in the marrow have to be 15% to be leukemia, and mine are at 5%. However, it’s just a definition – my blasts would increase over time to be 15% and then I would have developed an Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) that is very difficult to treat.
While concerned about my blood counts, Dr. H is positive about the BMT. He says I’m young and otherwise healthy (some people with MDS have had chronic infections, illnesses, and transfusions that have already wracked their bodies by the time they submit to a BMT), and that with a matched allogeneic (from a sibling) transplant, which we expect to get, the odds are good. Understand that by good he means greater than 50%, which is certainly not great, but it’s good enough for me. I feel like with a positive approach, good medical team, and the love and prayers of family and friends, it’s in the bag.
My hematologist, Dr. H was clearly a bit alarmed at the apparent acceleration in the decline of the blood counts, and said he would like to push or prepone (it’s an actual word meaning to schedule for an earlier time as opposed to postpone) my transplant to happen by the end of July. This was hard to hear at first. While I knew a bone marrow transplant was in the near future, facing it in only weeks made it a lot more real. After chewing on it for a while, I realized that sooner was better than later for a lot of reasons. First, there’s less waiting. Also, for my wife who teaches fourth grade and my son who’s planning to go into the Peace Corps in January, an earlier transplant means that by the time school starts and certainly by January, I should be home from the hospital and we’ll have some idea of how well the transplant took.
Dr. H said there are two places in the Philadelphia area where bone marrow transplants are done – at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in downtown Philadelphia and at the Temple – Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC) in Northeast Philadelphia. He says he has worked with both places and they are both good. I decided that I wanted to visit and have initial consultations with both places so I could make a choice based on something, so I set up appointments for the following Monday and Tuesday (6/28 and 29).
Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a disease of older people. Most people are over 70 years old when they contract the disease and approximately 90% of those who get the disease are 60 or older. This is significant because the only treatment known that can cure it is a bone marrow transplant and these are rarely done in people over 55 years old. I am 52 years old, so I’m still a candidate.
I wondered whether my disease is considered cancer since I have a malignant growth of cells, and if it is not cancer, why is it not. Dr. H explained that cancer involves tumors of some sort. Leukemia is not a cancer. It has something to do with body parts that constantly renew themselves (like blood) and those that don’t (like lungs, bones, breasts, prostates, etc.). By definition, I don’t have leukemia because the blasts in the marrow have to be 15% to be leukemia, and mine are at 5%. However, it’s just a definition – my blasts would increase over time to be 15% and then I would have developed an Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) that is very difficult to treat.
While concerned about my blood counts, Dr. H is positive about the BMT. He says I’m young and otherwise healthy (some people with MDS have had chronic infections, illnesses, and transfusions that have already wracked their bodies by the time they submit to a BMT), and that with a matched allogeneic (from a sibling) transplant, which we expect to get, the odds are good. Understand that by good he means greater than 50%, which is certainly not great, but it’s good enough for me. I feel like with a positive approach, good medical team, and the love and prayers of family and friends, it’s in the bag.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home