A journey in life - musings of a doctor, husband, dad, grandad, brother, and friend

Jan and I sat down on September 13th with Dr. Amy Dezern, head of the MDS (Myelodysplasia Syndrome) branch of Oncology at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. What Jan and I had suspected from the preliminary results of the flow cytometry and the bone marrow biopsy was confirmed by Dr. Dezern.  There is a small recurrence of my MDS cells in the bone marrow.  However, the news had some positive results as well.  Let me explain. The chimerism test (a test to show what amount of the the donor and host) showed that Erika's cells were 94% of the sample and my bone marrow contribution (the host) was 6%.  This means that the chimerism test from early June, which was 100% Erika cells had reduced down to 94%.  The cytogenetic studies revealed that 19 had a karyotype of female (Erika) and 3 had a male karyotype (me).  This means that Erika's cells continue to predominate. The other good news is that my white blood cell count has increased to 6100 with an absolute neutrophil count of 4700

“ Faith  has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.”  Thomas Aquinus The above statement on faith and hope are so true.  Faith and hope walk hand in hand with each other for those who have given their lives to Jesus Christ   If you add the love, you have from God and Jesus Christ, the promise that you will never be alone, you will always be loved and you will always have hope through your faith..   "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love. "  1 Corinthians: 13:13 (NIV) So HOPE is what Jan and I are going with right now.  We will sit down tomorrow with the Head of the MDS branch at Johns Hopkins, Amy Dezern, MD to review the bone marrow biopsy results from a couple of weeks ago.  There are some questionable results that need clarification and hopefully, no return of the MDS cells.  We'll also see Viki our "primary" outpatient oncologic NP to get further info and be examined