Diane Jensen: More transfusions, high blood pressure

Thursday, July 2, 2015

More transfusions, high blood pressure

We were told the Dacogen would tend to lower the blood counts and sure enough, they are doing just that. On Tuesday they gave her red blood cells. Today, blood tests indicated she was very close to her threshold of 26 at 26.2 for red blood and at 8 for platelets, which should be kept above 15.

So, today she is going to get platelets and red blood cells while we're at the clinic. We are hoping this will level off to more of normal or we will have to visit Logan Regional Hospital while at Bear Lake with the family. That would take away from lake and family time which we would do if it were unavoidable.

The last couple days her blood pressure has been high. They are going to have her take medicine to control that. No apparent reason for the rise, it could be the extra stress from all of the recent changes, or all the meds or even the Dacogen.

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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.