Diane Jensen: Day 27, coughing and chest x-ray

Monday, January 12, 2015

Day 27, coughing and chest x-ray

Today finds her coughing a little bit as she awoke, and during the day they gave her some cough medicine, plenty of ice chips and water. The cough medicine seemed to do the trick. They took her for a chest x-ray just to make sure that everything was okay, the doctor wants to play it on the safe side. Her numbers of neutrophils are down a little but that's not surprising they say considering some of the meds she is on for the fungus tends to eat up neutrophils. On the whole she has good numbers especially this soon after the chemo. She has decided that Henry's lady friends name (submitted by Carol) is Matilda. In German the name Matilda means "strength in battle", most approiate at this time, Diane is bouyed up as she thinks of this meaning. All of you have been wishing for strength in battle and have been showing it through your notes. Thank you!

1 comment:

AnonymousJanuary 13, 2015 at 2:33 PM
Thinking about you today. Love the name of your new doll. Very fitting. Hang in there. Love you,
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Diane is very thankful for any well wishes, even if she is not able to respond to all of them.

Diane's MDS Diagnosis

The hospital encourages visits when she is home or inpatient. Call first to insure she feels well enough at any particular time for visiting. Her immune system is severely compromised, so we ask you not to visit with young children or if you are ill. Currently she is an outpatient.

Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a bone marrow disease much like cancer. If left untreated, it will eventually lead to the failure of the bone marrow (requiring transfusions) or Leukemia.

The only way to prevent this is undergoing a bone marrow transplant. Presently, her blast counts are increasing faster than expected but have not reached the level of Leukemia. Her blood counts are lower now and she has had a transfusion to help with this. She is to proceed with the bone marrow transplant now because of how rapidly the MDS is progressing.

Diane will enter the LDS Hospital's Bone Marrow Transplant Unit on Wednesday, December 17^th. She will undergo alternating rounds of chemotherapy for about 2 weeks. The chemotherapy will kill the blood producing cells, as well as her immune system.

Once the blast counts are reduced enough, then Diane will receive a stem cell (bone marrow) transplant. Diane’s sister, Tracey, is a half match and is to be the stem cell donor. However, effort is still underway to get a full match in time for the transfusion. The purpose of the transplant is to have the healthy stem cells replace the unhealthy ones killed by the chemotherapy (in the bone marrow). Once the transplant is done she will be on medicine to prevent rejection for some time (estimated 6 months to a year).

Mid term bone marrow biopsy coming up on (day 17) Friday, Jan. 2 nd. Find out if more chemo might be needed after the results of that test come back. Then another biopsy about day 35. Transplant could take place around day 42 the doctor said.

At this time (June 30) no transplant is scheduled. The disease became active again about mid June. Her blast numbers increased rapidly within just a weekend. Had they been able to do transplant (June 8) it would NOT have been successful, and she would have gone thru much trama for nothing. She has started another round of chemo aimed at controlling the MDS to lower blast levels.

Both the chemotherapy and the stem cell transfusion will be very hard on Diane. We ask for your prayers of strength and comfort on her behalf.

This site will be updated with Diane’s progress.