March 16, 2006

Yesterday was Erica's first visit back to the hospital since her release last Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was the one day that she woke up tired and remained exhausted for most of the day which made this outting a bit difficult. Coupled with the tiredness, she has been experiencing nausea for the last three days. Thankfully, Marie was here to help with everything from navigating me through the confusing streets of Boston, builing IKEA furniture, to holding Erica's hand and offering kind words.
While at the hospital, we received good news and bad news. The good news first: her body is in complete remission with zero leukemic cells still in her bone marrow! Her cell counts are that of a normal person and they are pleased with the retreating fungal infection. However, there always seems to be something negative to report, the bad news: we need to start thinking about if Erica should have a bone marrow transplant surgery. The pros of this are naturally that the new bone marrow would ideally produce all healthy white blood cells and the leukemia won't return---which could also happen without the transplant surgery, but a greater percentage with the surgery. There are four potential side effects that could happen if we go through with the transplant. (1) organ damage or failure; (2) infection; (3) Graft v. Host Disease (if the host, aka Erica, rejects the donor causing problems with her skin, GI tract, etc.); and (4) fatality.
This surgery would be a loooooong four week process with chemotherapy, radiation, and then the transplant which is administered similiar to a blood transfusion. Although the doctors' initial response to the ALL was to go ahead with the transplant surgery, there are now reservations because of her initial high white blood cell count but her fantastic response to the chemo may factor in too.... basically, we were told not to worry too much about this for another 8-12 weeks and they will keep us up to date on everything we need to know. During that time the doctors will be explore the three potential semi-matching donors from the registry and focusing on clearing up her fungal infection.
This sentence is just to end on a note other than fungal infection... my dog doing well! :)