Friday July 26, 2013

Good afternoon everyone,

I was hoping to have some good news to post today and I do... but first we need to talk about what Jenn and I were informed of just last night.  Jenn's Leukemia is back already, even though she tested clean on the bone marrow biopsy just one week ago.  This means that the Leukemia has mutated and is already impervious to the chemotherapy.  So I know that everyone who is reading this right now is shaking their heads and some of you might even be crying. (I know we were last night when we heard this news)

But let me tell you what this all means for Jenn.  This is what is commonly referred to as a "bump in the road" to recovery.  Jenn had a few choices for treatment since the cancer is back so quickly.  They ranged from stopping the treatments, to high dosage chemo, to a clinical drug that will help fix Jenn's genetic mutation (FLT-3).  So Jenn's choice was to go with the clinical drugs that will help fix this mutation in her genes, so that this disease will hopefully never come back.  Jenn started the drug last night and so far has been able to keep the pills down and thus that is great news!

So what does this mean as far as Jenn's road to recovery.  Well it means a few things, first and foremost this means that Jenn will have to wait for the bone marrow transplant until she takes this clinical drug and it starts to show signs of working and fixing this mutation.  It also means that Jenn probably won't be released from the hospital until after the bone marrow transplant or a la a few months from now. 

We are hopeful that this clinical drug is going to fix the mutation, but they also may administer a newer clinical drug to combat the Leukemia and to help fix the genetic mutation.  After that, if neither work, Jenn will get high dosage chemo as a last resort.

So... now we all need to pray for a speedy recovery and pray for these clinical drugs to work. 

We also had some GREAT news today, Jenn has 5 matches for her bone marrow donors!!!!  This is AWESOME!!

So now the plan is to take Jenn from the Leukemia wing straight to the bone marrow transplant unit.  But in the meantime Jenn needs to keep eating and getting physically stronger as the bone marrow transplant is quite physically draining.

We are taking this all in stride as Jenn has dealt with these "bumps in the road" quite well, so now we just need to get over this one.

Thanks for all of the cards, calls and visitors.  We love all of you guys!!

Much love from room 5409!!