Carry On

That's the word from Dr. Kumar, who called to inform us that Myla will NOT be having a bone marrow transplant, at least not now. Instead, she'll continue with the three remaining rounds of chemo, and if the leukemia is still present after the 3rd round, then a transplant may be called for.

Even though they don't know if the abnormal cells the pathologist spotted were leukemic, those cells were included, as it turns out, in the 2-3% level of blasts they reported on Monday. In light of this, the medical staff didn't think it would be worth it to subject such a young child to the drastic step that is a bone marrow transplant, especially because Myla doesn't have an exact match for the marrow.

That's the update for now, and I find myself somewhat relieved. Ideally, we could proceed with a bone marrow transplant with an exact donor match, but let's just pray that this third round knocks the leukemia out for good.

I had an interesting thought last night. Raul Matthew is not a match, but what if another sibling who is not yet born turned out to be a match? If Myla makes it through these five rounds of chemo, there is still a good chance that she could have a relapse within the next five years. By then, perhaps her new sibling would be old enough to be a donor. The chances that this new sibling would be an exact match would only be 25%, so the odds aren't great, and going through another pregnancy with our situation is a bit crazy. It's something to think about, though.

The home nurse came this morning to take Myla's blood. Her numbers are 3,200 for the white blood cell count, 10.8 for hemoglobin, 442,000 for platelets, and 544 for ANC.