'nother update [View all]

Hate to yammer on about me, but I don't know what else to post here.

So, about a month ago, I alluded to bad news about my bone marrow biopsy, but didn't post details. I was still absorbing info.

The conclusion was that I had MDS (MyeloDysplastic Syndrome) and would likely need a bone marrow transplant.

I ultimately went down to Dana-Farber and they concluded I was not a candidate. The reasoning is that wiping my immune system (a requirement for transpant) would also wipe out the Immune Survellience system (which people have in theory but isn't fully understood). The problem with that is that if you have active cancer (as I do, Stage IV), then if it flares up in any way in the first year or so, there's nothing there to catch it, and it can run unchecked, and you can get riddled with tumors really quickly. So, the consensus is that the benefits don't outweigh the benefits.

Which leads us to the bigger issue; how do you continue to get chemo with crap for platelets? And that's my particular challenge right now. We're trying to figure out how to adjust chemo so I can sustain treatment, but generally I'll never really be cancer-free, and thus never really be a candidate.