A note to family and friends

Friends, it's so good to be out of hospital. Had the Bone Marrow Biopsy and afraid the results are not very encouraging. It's all a little confusing because I think the medical team are also a bit confused or confounded by the turn of events. I tolerated the radiation really well, I engrafted really quickly and smoothly ... things were screaming along. When the blood counts continued to drop inspite of all this everyone was scratching their heads. BMB results from last week show a return of the disease and it is behaving quite aggressively. I have just met with a new doctor (hematologist) and this is the plan : try a course of drugs (low grade chemo - methyl somethings) over a period of time to try and "turn on" those genes that fight the cancer (ie knock the disease back down). If we are able to do that then we will try another donor infusion (a third transplant). Treatment consists of 7 days of chemo then three weeks off. Probably a couple of cycles at this stage. Hopefully then blood counts will come up but in the meantime I can have transfusions when needed. I'm sick of being poked so first thing is to get a pic line in for transfusions etc. So hang on folks, here we go. Will try to update blog (or get Penny to) a bit more often as we go.