A couple of weeks ago I posted to the effect that I had attended my first bone marrow biopsy, which was performed on my wife, after she had been admitted to a hospital with very low blood levels.
At the time, we treated it as just something routine, but as it turns out, she has been diagnosed with “myelodysplastic syndrome” (MDS), which is one among a group of pre-leukemia types of cancers of the blood. Even though it is a “pre-leukemia,” it is still a cancer, and it seems as if they will be treating it aggressively. This means a regimen of intense chemotherapy, followed by a bone marrow transplant. The prognosis for this is about 70%-80% for a “complete remission” (CR).
Essentially, with this disease, it seems as if you get one chance at a cure; if for some reason there is a relapse, all the “prognosis” numbers seem to go way down. Left untreated, some 30% of cases progress to an aggressive form of leukemia called “acute myleoid leukemia” (AML). But once the “chemo-and-transplant” efforts have run their course, they seem to be far less effective the next time around.
Here are a few links, for those who are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelodysplastic_syndrome
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/myelodysplastic/Patient
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/myelodysplastic/HealthProfessional/page1
http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-types/myelodysplastic-syndrome/index.html
So far this is something that I’ve discussed privately with some fellow bloggers and online friends, and I’d like to thank those of you who have been praying for us. We have an appointment set for next week to meet with the specialists.
I won’t be writing about this here very much, but I have a personal blog where I’ll hope to be going into a bit more detail. Lord willing, I’ll have all of that together some time soon.
Also, comments are off for this post, as I'm at work today and won’t have time to respond; I do appreciate your prayers and concern.
