Monday, June 8, 2009

Monday, June 8, 2009

We just returned home from our trip to Mayo Clinic. We had mixed results.

The good news is that the CLL is in complete remission. The q11 and q13 chromosomes are now in the normal range. It is expected to stay in remission for some time, and of course, the longer, the better.

The bad news is that the blood counts have shown no signs of improvement and remain quite low. This makes Fred susceptible to illness, infections, etc. After this much time has elapsed from the last chemotherapy treatment and the bout with pneumonia they should have returned to normal. The tests indicated a q20 chromosome deletion. This is an indication of Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). This is a side effect of the chemotherapy treatment.

There is a possibility that the MDS may go away on it's own (Dr. Solberg says he has seen this happen), it could remain as is which would require monitoring, or worse case, it could develop into another type of leukemia called Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML).

Next steps:
- return to normal living, including being able to travel within the United States. The normal living and traveling requires Fred to take lots of precautions.
- blood tests will be scheduled for early July and early August to monitor the MDS and CLL.
- in late August another bone marrow biopsy will be performed to monitor the MDS and CLL.
- decide if we want to go to MD Anderson for another point of view.

As Dr. Solberg said, "Fred is trying to see if he can test him on all the side effects from the treatment of the CLL".

This is a new thing thrown our way so we need to do more research to see where and what we do from here on.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Today was tests day! We drove to Jacksonville so Fred could have blood work done and a CT chest/abdomen/pelvic scan at Mayo. We are now home and we wait until Monday when we go back to Jacksonville to find out the results.