02/03/2011

Alrighty, we heard from LDS in regards to planning the cord-blood transplant. We are TENTATIVELY looking at February 14th'ish to be going to Salt Lake to begin the process. Jeremie will be having multiple tests (repeat) to make sure he is (again) healthy for transplant. It's an insurance thing.

Jeremie has a really difficult leukemia. It likes to "hide" and manifest it self in abnormal ways. Such as making tumors during chemotherapy treatment, hiding in his central nervous system and causing abnormal marrow signal on MRI's. I'm giving this explanation, as to explain why our "good" news doesn't really give us a lot of information. Or something to hang our hat on.

Jeremie's bone-marrow biopsy came back negative (so far, still testing for his specific type of mutation that causes his type of leukemia). They measure this by looking at the number of blasts in his bone-marrow. Blasts are (again...I'm simplistic) new cells (think newborn) that have not differentiated and decided what they are going to be when they grow-up. Of course there are normal blasts in every one's bone-marrow. So the very small piece of bone that they took for biopsy is negative. That doesn't mean it is negative elsewhere in the body. See what I mean, by good news doesn't really give us a lot of info?

To diagnose acute myelocytic leukemia there needs to be 20% or greater blasts in the bone marrow. This is essentially the danger behind leukemia, if your bone marrow fills with blasts and don't grow-up to be platelets, white blood cells, red-blood cells etc (K...really being simplistic but you get the point). Then you have no way to support your cells, tissue, organs and fight infections, etc. This is why leukemia stinks. Jeremie's pain comes from his marrow being "full" of leukemic cells (blasts or immature cells that have trisomy 8 with NPMI mutation- his type of leukemia) that push on the bone from the inside out. The back pain he is experiencing is "symptomatic" of leukemia. See the problem with thinking that a negative bone-marrow biopsy is the sure fire way of see if his leukemia is there or not?

So back to our plan. After a good month of consideration, going to California and pondering, praying and considering every option available. We decided that the cord-blood transplant is the best thing for our family, and for Jeremie.

So of course we still would love your prayers! This is an exciting and scary time. But a time we are full of love and hope. Thank you all for your continued love, and continued prayers.

LOVE!

Cori & Jeremie