July 25, 2006
Today is a joyful day! Today is a splendid and wonderful day! Today we went to the oncologist’s office for the blood test, and for the first time, all of the readings were in the normal range. How beautiful is normal! The remission is still in place, and our doctor sat down to discuss how we would move on from here. He had already consulted with the doctor at the Med Center in Omaha who is recognized as an authority on MDS and they concluded that it would be a good thing to have remedial chemotherapy every eight weeks. He explained it this way: There is a material that wraps around the DNA, trapping it in a way that it cannot clone itself, or regenerate the new cells. The Vidaza therapy destroys this material, freeing the DNA to do its task. I appear to have enough stem cells remaining that my blood returned to normal counts. Since the stem cells have been under attack for an unknown amount of time, the number of them remaining is also unknown, so they think the safest route to remaining in remission is to repeat the chemotherapy enough to keep the blood cells at a normal level. The doctors felt that it would not be wise to wait until the blood cell levels dropped again before resuming treatment as that would signal more stem cells may have been destroyed, and bringing everything back would be more difficult. It was again explained to us that only the symptoms can be dealt with – the cause remains and its cure is unknown.
From Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities; he redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving kindness. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name!”
