BMT Possibilities

Well, I had another blood transfusion this week (Wed) as expected. My hemoglobin was 8.8 on Tuesday when I went in a day early since I wanted to get the transfusion as soon as possible. I was dragging over the weekend though I made it to my mother's 89th birthday party at the nursing home on Sunday night. My platelets were up to 573 and my Factor 2 was up to 31. I missed a day of medication on Saturday and had a big spinach salad at the birthday party. This most likely is related to the rise. Spinach is high in Vitamin K which counteracts the Coumadin.

I also met with my doctor on Wed along with Marilyn and Anna. We discussed what is next and were discouraged from putting much hope in a BMT. Dr still wants to try other treatments first, initially trying a combination of anagrelide and hydrea. I have reduced my anagrelide to one pill per day, rather than taking alternating between 1 and 2 pills each day. This what we tried in early June when I went for 5 days before platelets hit an all time high. My expectation is that this will not help, but Dr will add some hydrea to compensate. I don't expect frequency of transfusions to change though I did go for 28 days at that time. It seems like medicine reduces both platelets and hgb.

The Dr did talk more about the possibility of a mini-BMT. In essence, they would use less chemotherapy and radiation so all of the old bone marrow would not be destroyed. The new donor stem cells would then battle the old bone marrow for dominance and hopefully take over. In this case, some studies indicate that it would be better to have a MUD (matched, but unrelated donor) than my brother donate the stem cells. The following Only Real Cure article (which I referenced before) describes this very well. It also indicates that my chances of survival could be between 30 and 60% after two years depending on how many penalty points I rate. I have not found any similar statistics for people receiving blood transfusions or the medicines that I am on. I will also need to add something like Exjade to counter the buildup of iron from the transfusions.

This may not seem very encouraging, but I am thankful for each day that I have. I have survived at least 5 blood clots in my lungs where the chance of death were about 20 percent for each one. By all rights, I am living on borrowed time, by the grace of God. Think about it for a new perspective on life each day.