December 30, 2007

Hello everyone...

There have been some questions as to what consolidation is...

Alex's treatment is broken up into several parts. The first month was called Induction. She received a weekly spinal tap to administer chemo and also weekly bone marrow draws. The bone marrow draws were basically done to compare them to the first one and see what progress they were making on the leukemia cells. So far the leukemia is in remission, meaning that on the last draw at week 4 they found less than -.01% leukemia cells. After induction, she moves on to Consolidation. We are really not sure how long this lasts. We think about 4 more months. The first month of consolidation was a weekly spinal tap. When she gets this done, they administer chemotherapy called Methotrexate. This kills any cells hiding in the spinal and brain fluid. A place where those cells love to hide. Also during the first month of consolidation, she receives 2 different IV chemo’s on the first day in the clinic… followed by 3 days IV chemo at home, where a home health nurse comes in… and 14 days in a row of chemo in a pill form. Then this starts all over again on day 29 (beginning of 5^th week). This schedule sounds like it will last for 3 more months after the completion of the one we are on. If that makes any sense. Dan and I pour over the paperwork and we still come across new things that we didn’t understand before. Everything is written up as “days”. She gets Vincristine (a powerful IV chemo that is awful) on days 1,8,15, and 22. That is how it is written up as the first month… then the second month of treatment she gets it on “days” 15, 22, 43, and 50. This was very confusing to us at first because we didn’t know the “days” started all over again after every “session”. All of this is dependant on her blood counts. If her platelets aren’t good, and if her ANC (good white blood cells) isn’t above a certain number, then treatment is postponed. Only the next session is postponed with blood counts. Once the session starts, it is continuous until the end.SO… Alex spent 10 days in isolation because she was at a ZERO white blood count.

So… Starting this Thursday, we should be on a bad roller coaster for at least 3 weeks. Depending on her blood counts that is… A home health nurse will come in on Wednesday and draw some blood, and then they will let us know if her next session on Thursday will go on. We are thinking it will, because Alex’s counts haven’t hit bottom this time. This is good though… I don’t want to prolong this. I would rather stay on schedule and get this next phase over! I say “Bring it on!”.