• Praying for Grammy

    My mom, Dorothy has been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in a contained area in her acetabulum (hip bone).  With this diagnosis, she should be very sick, but miraculously, it has been contained and has not spread through her body.

    However, since the prognosis was so bad and there was a possibility that it could spread, it was decided on December 10th that she would have intensive chemotherapy in the hospital for three weeks.  She spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital, where she was very ill.  After that treatment, she had a course of radiation for 18 days on a specific area in her hip.  After both treatments, her counts all went down, but they slowly went back to normal.

    During the following summer she had a having a series of three treatments of chemotherapy in the hospital.  The doctors decided to do this as a precaution.  The doctors felt very hopeful that she would beat this.  If she can stay cancer-free from some time, she will be considered in remission.

    She has finished all three rounds of chemotherapy.  Her platelet count continued to go too low and she was admitted to the hospital on several occasions, received platelets another time, had an infection in her PICC line, and also received a blood transfusion.  At one point she only had 300 white blood cells (a healthy person has over 10,000).   By the end of August, she was healthy enough to be here for the birth of her third grandchild: Bunky.

    By December 2009, her counts were back to normal.

    In February 2010, she had a biopsy of her sternum because an MRI in January showed something there, but the biopsy came back CLEAR!

    Since she does not have any markers in her blood for cancer, it is very hard to tell if the cancer has resolved.  All that they can do is detect when it has spread.  As a result, she will continue to be tested in the future.

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