It's been awhile

Since my last post I was able to get some much needed healing time and was able to return to work at the start of the new year.  By the beginning of February my cancer (a blood cancer known as MDS) had returned.  The return of the cancer was not totally unexpected.  We knew it would come back, we had just hoped I would get a little more time before it did.

By late February, I began chemo once again.  We had hoped that I would only need four rounds (5 consecutive days, once a month) however, my body refused to respond to treatment and we ended up going a full six rounds.  Unfortunately, this time around I had to leave work during my fourth round of chemo.  My body just couldn't handle it this time.  My blood counts were always so low, I was in constant need of blood and platelet transfusions and I basically just felt like crap 90% of the time.  I am happy to say that in the end, after six rounds of chemo, I did finally show signs of response.  Our goal, by the end of six rounds of chemo was to move into a second stem cell transplant.  However, we've encountered a few hiccups along the way. 

Our first hiccup moving toward transplant was the level of iron in my blood.  Due to having more transfusions than I can count, the iron level in my blood is very, very high which is very, very bad going into transplant...it would make my organs unhappy and no one likes unhappy organs!  So we've been working on getting that level down through medication and by me learning how to live with a bit of a depleted hemoglobin level to reduce the number of blood transfusions.  It's worked!  My levels are coming down to a safe level for transplant. 

Our second hiccup is a little more complicated.  My brother, Christopher, was all set up to be my donor this time around and my admit date for transplant was to be September 25th.  However, just last week we learned, through the process of preparing for transplant, that Christopher is no longer a viable option as a donor.  The antigen* levels in my body, when tested against my brother, were so very high (likely due to the previous failed transplant) that transplanting my brother's cells into my body would have failed and resulted in my death.  Unfortunately, this is something that we did not anticipate being an issue.  But, fortunately the issue was caught before transplant and we are moving on to Plan B.  Plan B just so happens to be my other brother, Jonathan.  We are still waiting on the results on one more of his antigen markers, but so far it looks good and my admit date will only be pushed back by one week, making it October 2nd.  In the event that Plan B does not pan out (which is a possibility) we also have a Plan C, which is moving on to the donor registry, Be The Match.  I don't currently have a perfect match on the registry, just an "ok" match.  So if we need to go that route, I guess we have alot of thinking to do.  And even if we decide to go for it, we still have to locate the donor and hope that this person is still willing and able to be a donor.

*https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002224.htm

I will be sure to update again as we get new information.

To be continued...