Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Day 15 - New Drug Added

We headed back to the hospital today for Sarah's 3rd round of chemotherapy. She recieved chemotherapy via a spinal tap and intravenously through her "picc" line. Some bone marrow was also sampled to evaluate the chemo treatment effectiveness. Sarah was anesthesized for these procedures so she felt absolutely no pain.

Bone Marrow Donor Update:
Sarah's doctor said the initial test results for one of our children being a bone marrow donor looked promising. The doctor said a "couple of them" looked hopeful. He stopped short of saying one was a match until the final test results come in over the next couple of days. Hopeful news...
I'll post the results of the childrens bone marrow match testing as soon as we hear more.

New Drug Added:
Another drug will be added to Sarah's daily regimen starting Friday (Day 18), "Imatinib" also known as "Gleevec". The drug is primarily intended for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), but it works for her specific subtype of leukemia too (PH+ALL). The drug was added since the leukemia cell count in her bone marrow has not sufficiently reduced (below 5% of diagnosed levels) with the current regimen. The goal is to get Sarah into remission in preperation for a bone marrow transplant.

In general, Sarah is doing pretty good at home. Still no "difficult" side effects from the chemo treatment and we are having no trouble finding plenty of things to be thankful for. While Susan and I are having high and low moments, we still love and have faith in the lord.
-1 Cor 13:12

Informative websites:
http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site759/mainpageS759P0.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imatinib

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