October 4th

Day 12

It's Monday morning in Utah and the weather looks like it's finally changed to fall. As much as I love this season, so much of it is tied to this illness for me that's it's hard to enjoy it. October of 2007 is when Alex was first diagnosed with leukemia (ALL). It will forever be the most devastating time for us. Now it's October again and we are faced with our biggest battle yet.

I have been scouring the internet for days looking for resources that can help us all through this. Manly looking for others that have been through this that I can talk to. I feel mentally prepared for most things, but would love to speak to some "real" people to find information for things that I haven't thought of... things that can help us simplify our lives for the months ahead.

Alex will be going through a Allogeneic transplant with an unrelated donor. I have been doing a lot of research on the facilities where this is performed and their ratings. Mostly the important factor is that they are FACT certified. After MUCH research I have found out that this facility is in fact, FACT... So, that is good news. It appears that there are many tests that will take place before the transplant... Echocardiograms, EKG, Pulmonary function tests, CT and MRI scans, and more bone marrow biopsies. She will also undergo total body irradiation.

If anyone knows of any up-to-date Bone Marrow Transplant blogs, please forward them to me. I would greatly appreciate it. I'm having a hard time finding anything current.

At this point I am not sure if they have made the decision to do the the bone marrow or peripheral stem cell transplantation. They are both pretty similar in the way they are performed. I am really hoping to know more soon.

From where we sit right now, it appears we have at least 8 weeks before we can begin.

Today Alex is doing pretty well. She is having some side effects from this last round of chemotherapy. Her hands look extremely sunburned and they are sore. She also is having a hard time opening her eyes all the way. They assure us that this is normal, but haven't commented on how long they think it will last. We are also waiting on the C-Diff test to come back. I really don't think they will find anything there but... who knows? She is unhooked from the IV pole for a few precious hours and is enjoying that :) I have not received her paperwork with her blood counts today, but she did have to have another platelet transfusion yesterday. I hope those little guys are looking up today.

I am also thinking of moving this blog to a different place. This website (which is totally awesome by the way) makes it hard to find archived posts... and also hard to post photos and such. If anyone has a blogging site that is easy to make and update, I would sure love some recommendations. Please email me :) My email address is always on the right side of this page. Email me any time!

Thanks for tuning in everyone! I truly appreciate it!