Introduction

Hello and thank you all for using this Blog so that we can easily keep you all up to speed with my mom's progress.

I'll try to post as often as possible or whenever something changes and Carol, Jaime or Alexia may also make posts but probably myself (Daniel) for the most part.

If we haven't been able to contact you directly, please accept our apology as many things were going on and it was hard to think sometimes about contacting everybody but we greatly appreciate your care and concern and thoughts.

Recently Carol had been a little under the weather and could not figure out why things were not improving after two weeks. She also had some swelling in her ankles so Dr. Lieber ordered blood work on her. The results revealed low counts of her platelet, white, and red cell counts and so he instructed her to go to Sarasota Memorial Hospital for a transfusion of hemoglobin and platelets as well as intravenous antibiotics on Saturday, February 27th. During her stay she needed a total of four units of blood. These cells are normally produced in the bone marrow and for some reason this wasn't happening properly. It was certainly not a fun night but she had visits throughout the night from her nurse to complete her transfusion and deliver medicine. Then she spent a few more days getting rest and had a bone marrow biopsy on Monday, March 1st.

During all this time, Jaime had been stuck in the middle of a business trip in Las Vegas. He had been trying to get a ticket back ASAP, but he ended up not being able to arrive until Wednesday morning after a few long days with little sleep at the airport. I stayed at the hospital with my mom for the first night and visited every day after work until bed time and made sure she had anything she needed from home.

She was allowed to come home on the 2nd and on the 3rd we received a call from her oncologist, Dr. Chu, with results from the biopsy. At this point we are aware of two possibilities which will be determined by a specialist at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa as soon as she can get an appointment there which is TBD. She will also have blood tests this Friday, the 5th to determine whether she will need another transfusion.

If Carol's bone marrow biopsy reveals a count of less than 20% of "leukemia blast cells" she may have Myelodysplastic Syndrome which is the better of the two possibilities. It would require her to have a Bone Marrow Transplant but it will not need to be rushed as she can first be treated with an injected medication called "Vidaza" for some period of time to prevent progression to Acute Leukemia. We are hoping that after the transplant she would be pretty much finished with the whole ordeal.

If her tests reveal over 20% of these "blast cells" then the diagnosis will be that she has Acute Leukemia. This would require her to begin more intense Chemotherapy immediately (within a week or so) which would likely take place at the Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa for about 3 weeks where she would have the 8th best facility in the United States for this sort of thing and the proximity of supporting loved ones to keep her strength where she would need it, versus flying out of state for a slightly higher rated facility which is risky and not being able to have the same support. She will still need the Bone Marrow transplant.

The best donors for the transplant are her siblings, Michael and Susan. So they are going to be evaluated by a test called HLA Typing to see if they are a match for her. If not, we are told that the donor would then be searched from a "bank" of registered volunteers as well as any other friends and family who want to be tested in case they can be matched as a donor.

That said, Carol's spirits are high and so are her doctor's. She's been through similar things before so she is not panicked because she has an idea of what to expect from here on out, though it could be rough. It is common for this to happen to patients who are treated with chemotherapy, but normally it occurs within 7 years of treatment. It has been about 14 years since Carol's treatment. Some of us are guessing that this is thanks to what great physical care she takes of herself through her exercise and diet.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and for any comments, etc. that you make. Many of you have expressed your concern and offered to help and even visited at the hospital as well as here at our home and we all feel really lucky to have such great friends and family supporting us. Thank you so much.

Also I should mention that Carol is currently neutropenic so there are some precautions/guidelines to take when visiting as you can see in the link there. Here is one more link to explain some of the proper diet and care of a neutropenic patient.

I'll try to keep this up to date and you're all welcome to e-mail me at danieljgray1@gmail.com if you wish to ask something more directly. There are links to the right of this blog to help you get notified about new posts and comments.

I have had to update this a few times so I will start to note here when the last update was made. Currently this post has been updated as of 9:04AM March 4th.

-Daniel