Yesterday Andy had an appointment with his oncologist in Worcester. Dr. O'Shea does blood levels checking; the good news is that Andy's blood levels are pretty stable. They are almost the same as the way they were 5 weeks ago. That's good news in that it means that this disease isn't being aggressively worse. We'll be going back in two weeks to check the levels again. He also answered some of our questions. One of them for me...I was confused why I'd see mortality statistics..some where 4 years, some 5 and some 10 years, etc. I was also confused as to how someone could get a stem cell or bone marrow transplant and not be cured..well, why aren't all people who get transplants cured? The statistics are really based on how long the study is on from what I understand. The being cured part..well, I guess there is a possibility that not all the cells in the marrow can be killed by the chemo and radiation treatments and therefore, that errant cell(s) can actually reproduce itself and before you know it; the patient is back to MDS or Leukemia again. A patient can die from complications of the chemo/radiation treatments and/or from complications of recovery (such as infection)....That gives me a little bit more in the way of hope. This one 'paper' that was published online said that there was 31% long term survival from the patients in their study...it kind of threw me for a loop...so, I asked him...so, do people just die after 4 years? really...a very daunting prospect. The bottom line...studies aside...is that no matter what, we..Andy especially, has to take one day at a time...never mind what 1, 2, 3 or 5 years from now...lets just take each day, be grateful for it and hope there is a tomorrow for him, for me, for all of us. I'm looking to when we're both in our 60's and able to travel alone and all over the place :)
Okay...the other news. That same day..we found out from Dana Farber that Megan is not a match for Andy..she only matches 6 out of 12 markers. Now we're waiting on Erin's kit to be typed. They hadn't received her kit as of yesterday. She'd just sent it out two days later than Megan's, so we're not sure why it's taking so long to get to Dana Farber. And we're hopeful that she's a match. If not, another piece of news is that a preliminary search of the anonymous donor database has found several matches for Andy. They will do further testing on these people if Erin turns out to not be a match, too.
This will hopefully allow us to move quicker on Andy's getting that stem cell transplant. I went and bought a steam cleaner..to help keep the floors as clean as they can be. I've developed a schedule of chores for all of us to do so that once Andy is home and these chores will absolutely need to be done, we'll be used to doing them. We'll be starting that this coming weekend. I've taken down the curtains and washed them and washed the windows and will be cleaning all other things so that we can start the schedule without having to do a huge amount of scrubbing, etc. Spring cleaning if you will. :) I've never been one to keep the house spotless, but that's going to change a little bit. Funny thing is I would do a huge cleaning if we were getting guests, but now, we won't have to do that because we'll be on top of cleaning for the sake of Andy's health.
A good thing :) Anyway, so that's all there is to it folks. I'm not feeling especially introspective or anything like that. Just kind of in a waiting mode. I have myself a doctors appointment tomorrow to make sure I'm healthy as I can be considering my weight and that I have hypothyroidism and am prediabetic (other doctors have said that just means I'm diabetic..but I don't watch my sugars with monitor... and my doctor never said I was diabetic..she said I was prediabetic..so screw those other doctors!! lol)...I want my regular doctor to keep an eye on me rather than the endocrinologist..her attitude stinks and I don't want to deal with her. I also have pain in my right knee and this weird pain in my right lower abdomen and I get this other pain in my upper right abdomen, just below my ribs. Not sure what that can be..so we'll see. Going to assume I'm as healthy as can be regardless. :) Everything tends to work out. :)
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