Continuing treatment while at home

For the friends and family that follow this blog, it’s easy to see that for the past couple of months Carol has been feeling great and looking even better. She is without a doubt the best example of how a patient should confront this disease. Never stopping her exercises, walks, yoga, cooking her organic meals and keeping her chin up, higher than anyone else I know.

With things running very smoothly it’s surprising to see that her white cells, red cells, platelets and % of donor’s cells counts were slowly getting lower. Her last biopsy showed 85% of donor’s cells, compared with 97% on her previous biopsy.

Dr. Tomblyn explained that the medications given to Carol to prevent GVHD could also be preventing the donor’s cells from propagating and completely taking over Carol’s cells.

As a result, Dr. Tomblyn is now rapidly reducing Carol’s steroid medication giving the donor’s cells less obstructions to complete their job. Another bone morrow biopsy is scheduled for mid November to see if these steps accomplish their objective. Other medications could also be increased or decreased if needed.

Of course, with the steroids soon gone, some issues may appear, such as digestive, skin, loss of appetite, etc.

Wednesday Carol will be getting a blood transfusion at Sarasota Memorial.
Rowing is on hold until platelets bounce back.
Everything else will continue as before.
More updates as they develop.
Thank you.
Jaime