Diane Jensen: Another fever

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Another fever

She started to chill and shake and fever again last night. She didn't think it was quite as bad, fever was about 102. Blood cultures should be back tonight, might have some clues in the results. She was hoping to go home for a couple days on Sunday but if they don't have answers they won't let her go. By now the scheduled transplant process is pretty much set and they will need to address any of these current problems and have them resolved in order to begin on Tuesday the 8th at 8 am.

Tuesday is called day -9, admission and central line placement. Day -8 thru -5 are obliterating chemo administration days. This process will flush out her defective cancerous bone marrow (hoping to flush and kill the disease MDS cells as well). Days -4 thru -1 are for rest and anti-rejection drugs therapy, preparation procedures for the donor stem cells, and observation.

Day 0 is transplant day (June 18). They told us that was to be a celebration day, a sort of birthday. (might even get rid of arthritis and other bad stuff--yea,worth a try). A courier will have been sent to pick up the stem cells with a little cooler someplace outside of the USA from the hospital where the donor will be giving the cells. The courier will then board a plane and fly back here with the little iced cooler. As soon as they arrive the hospital will be ready and waiting and begin the transplant. Transplant will take between 15 minutes and an hour and will be done as a transfusion of stem cells. This day will be a celebration day, a sort of birthday. We can have birthday cake but NO candles, foil balloons but NOT latex ones, artificial but NOT real flowers or plants. We've already told the grandkids to start planning the decorations. They will do a great job with that. They did for Christmas-a tree with ornaments, snow flakes on the walls and even a fire place with stockings.

So far that is the schedule. Beyond that we hope that "grating in" will take place with as few problems as possible. Any problems (called GVHD - craft versus host disease), will be dealt with as necessary. GVHD usually occurs in two phases, the first 100 days would be referred to as accute, the critical would happen in the next year or so. She will be in the hospital for two to the weeks or more following day 0 depending on the need.

Thanks to everyone for your support and prayers and fasting.

1 comment:

jus pour maigrirJune 6, 2015 at 11:23 PM
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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.