October 22 Update

Greetings, everyone.

Here is your October 22 update.

First, on the previous subject of possible donors, the male who is the primary possibility is due to have his evaluation early this week, so stay tuned on that. At this point, the tentative date for Kristina’s transplant is November 2, but that is very tentative.

The good news this week came from Kristina’s latest bone marrow aspiration. They do aspirations to measure the percentage of blast cells in her bone marrow. In the simplest terms, if the percentage goes over 5 she needs more chemotherapy. When she left the hospital her percentage was 1.1, at which point the disease is considered to be in “clinical” remission, rather than full remission. Well, with last week’s aspiration, her blast percentage was down to 0.33 percent! Kristina told me this is “righteous good news for the transplant.”

She also had blood drawn and tested this week, and everything was within the normal range. The two things to keep an eye on, however, are her liver and platelet numbers. The liver numbers were up slightly (we want them to go down), and the platelet levels were down (we want them to go up). Her platelet level was 160, which is down from 260 when she left the hospital last month. Normal is consider 150-400, and if it gets down to about 15 she’ll need platelet transfusions. Mainly, this means she has to be very careful to avoid bruising or anything that might make her bleed.

And finally, she chose her transplant protocol; she went with the standard protocol, which she described to me as “blast me now so I’ll have a better chance later.” In other words, the protocol she chose is much harsher during the actual transplant but has a higher survival rate afterwards. And when I say harsh, I mean it; she told me the transplant alone has a mortality rate of around 40 percent.

Kristina made it clear to me that she chose this route because she wants to do whatever it takes to not have to do all of this again in two years. Financially, physically, and emotionally, she cannot deal with repeating all this as a single person, so she’s taking the best chance of long-term survival she has – even if it means higher short-term risk.

There’s a planned musical fundraiser on December 19 at The Tractor Tavern in Ballard, so stay tuned for all the details on that. In the meantime, please consider making a donation, via the link on the right side of this page, to help with Kristina’s expenses.

As always, she appreciates the good and loving vibes. She’s trying to get back to each and every one of you little by little, so please forgive if it’s taking a while. Meanwhile, she’d love to hear from you, so please post some comments down below, and she’ll see them.