Thursday, March 12, 2009

3-12-09: Dasatinib Treatment Fails

Sarah has returned to the hospital today. The visiting nurse came to our house Wednesday to draw Sarah's blood for CBC. Sarah had 45% blast count in her blood (45% of the white blood cells where leukemic). Sarah's blast count was 73% when she got to the hospital today for chemotherapy. The doctors don't think the Dasatinib was working for her. I guess we'd have to agree.

The plan as of last Saturday was to have Sarah return mid-week for additional chemotherapy. We just didn't plan on doing it with a high blast count. The chemotherapy she is getting is high dose methotrexate. It's administered over 24 hours. We are praying she tolerates the treatment as well as she has previous chemo treatments and that the blasts do not return when her blood counts begin to rise again.

We talked with the bone marrow director at Dana Farber tonight to see what she'd require for Sarah to move into DLI treatment. The DLI might buy some time for Sarah to prep for a 2nd BMT. Basically, Sarah needs get to <10% class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">DLI at Dana Farber. The BMT director also mentioned 2 clinical trials Sarah might qualify for, one ongoing in Washington and another at Dana Farber in about 1 month. We'll be discussing the clinical trials with Sarah's oncology team tomorrow. One additional option we will be considering is another new targeted drug called Nilotinib. It's similar to Imatinib and Dasatinib, but each one can have a greater or lesser impact on specific mutations of Sarah's type of cancer.

Three of our children are staying with another family we are friends with. The rest of our children are with us at the hospital. We are staying at Davids House which provides housing, food, laundry, etc. for families of children in the hospital. Davids House is one parking lot away from the hospital.

We know Sarah's treatment options are dwindling. It's not a good feeling. It took a bit of searching to renew our hope, but God is continuing to provide that for us. We'll continue to pray and listen and hopefully hear what God is asking for us to do next.
-Ben

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Susan, Ben, and family,
We're very sorry to hear of this latest setback. We'll keep praying that the blasts go back down and Sarah can qualify for the DLI or one of the new trials. You are often in our thoughts and always in our prayers.

Donna, Ken, and Michelle