My prognosis

Wellllll...it could be better. It could be a whole lot better. My chromosomal tests came back with the dreaded monosomy 7. This means that, in the cancerous cells, chromosome 7 is missing its pair. I'm no geneticist. I don't even know if I spelled geneticist correctly. But I hear monosomy 7 type AML is very resistant to treatment. As in very difficult to get into remission.

So what does that mean?

I told you about those three risk groups (favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable). This places me squarely in the unfavorable group. There was a study done on ten people under the age of 60 who had this type of AML who underwent treatment. After four years, two of them were still alive. This study represents the most optimistic odds of survival. I guess with monosomy 7, age isn't really a helpful factor.

What happens now?

I'm going to go through this round of chemo as expected. Hopefully that will get me into remission. But regardless, I will be looking for a stem cell donor and if all goes really smoothly I could be traveling to Seattle for the transplant in 4 to 6 weeks. I'm hoping one of my brothers will be a match. Assuming one of them is, he will go to Seattle with me and we will undergo an extensive process that I haven't fully wrapped my head around. Oh, I just learned that stem cell transplant and bone marrow transplant are just two names for the same thing. I guess a long time ago people would take bone marrow from one person and jam it into the receiver's bones. Now what happens is blood from the donor gets processed and filtered in a very specialized way, and this is what gets injected into the bones of the receiver.

I would undergo an even more extensive chemotherapy that would completely obliterate my bone marrow, then my brother's stem cells would be gently placed into my bones where they would grow and thrive. What this really is is an immune system transplant. Basically, my immune system didn't get the memo that monosomy 7 is a total assfucker and needs to be killed on sight. Hopefully my brother's immune system knows better. So by having his system take over inside my body, he can take over the fight for my ill-equipped JV team. Am I telling ISIS jokes now?

Anyway, once his stuff is in me, and even before, I will be a bubble boy. Bubble girl. And there will be a very delicate period where we see if he kills just the bad cells, or if he also kills other parts of my body that he doesn't recognize. It sounds like this is about a six month process. Six months in Seattle.

Anyone have any recommendations for Seattle nightlife?

I hope this post doesn't cause me to lose my readership. I know not everyone likes to read depressing news about the increasing likelihood of death. But guess what? If you're reading this, you're not going to get out alive either.

So just bare with me. Let's see where this goes, shall we?

Hopefully, here (Amie's office)