After the devastating news, a treatment plan was laid out. It consisted basically of chemotherapy and red cell transfusions. After the initial shock, I had to give Janet so much credit for handling this with grace and optimism. The ultimate goal was to get her body ready for the stem cell transplant. The idea was that the chemo would lower the “blast” (immature red cells) count. When she was first diagnosed, her blast count was 16; not good, considering that 20 indicated that the disease had progressed to AML (acute myelogenous leukemia)–very scary. Since then she has been coping day by day–sometimes the only way to cope.
Janet is by nature an optimist, but all the stress of worrying about whether or not the treatment would work had taken its toll. Each time she would go for a bone marrow biopsy, it seemed that the blast count had not gone down. It was so heartbreaking one day when I met her in Starbucks and her optimism was being replaced by talk of “clinical trials” and the unspoken thought of actually dying was in the air. What brought this on was that she was scheduled to have another bone marrow biopsy and she was just “sure” that the results would not be good.
But, the many prayers were answered because the blast count was way down, making room for the actual stem cell transplant. After many months of hoping for a miracle it seems that this was now possible. She is certainly not out of the woods by any means, but at least there is a chance for a cure, something she was beginning to think was not possible.