Clarity

Jon's going to elaborate on our Houston experience thus far, but that's taking a little time, so I wanted to update some key developments.

Essentially the normal 4 rounds of consolidation chemo are unlikely to result in a lasting solution for dad given his rare karyotype in the leukemia cells. Most AML patients have around a 30% chance of staying in remission, but with dad's mutations in the leukemia, he would have less than 10% according to his doctor at MD Anderson. But we have good news on that front, we have a preliminary bone marrow match (we are still waiting for high resolution gene sequencing to confirm) in dad's sister Sissy.

It was wonderful to hear how fired up Sissy was when she found out that she is the preliminary match, and humbling that dad's brother Buddy was disappointed he couldn't be the donor. Sissy pointedly referenced Donkey from Shrek in expressing her emotion, "Pick me! Me! Me! Pick me!"
We are still waiting on Paul's initial low-resolution results to come back, as men can create the marrow stem cells easier than women. But the stem cell doctor, Dr. Elizabeth Shpall was elated that we have a sibling match- which really reduces the likelihood of any potential difficulties down the road. If all goes according to plan, dad will be cancer free by his birthday, and confirmed by Christmas, with Sissy's help!

Even better, we won't have a relapse hanging over our heads in the future, as Sissy's stem cells should take over completely and dad's blood will become Sissy's normal blood. We will write more about the awesome process later (pictured below learning about all the transplant intricacies). But in the mean time, we have been sent back to good ole Louisiana to undergo a round of consolidation chemo while we wait for everything to be set up for the stem cell transplant. Even though we are ahead of the curve in having found the potential match (normally, patients will only now begin the search process), typically patients would undergo at least 1 round of consolidation chemo before a transplant. Ideally, they get the bones completely empty of everything so the donor's cells ride into the rescue.

So we have a few more weeks to savor the bayou before we put on our boots and hats and drive the wagon west for a while. Jon's already setting up an office at Jefferies in Houston, and we looked at multiple overpriced apartments this morning before we hit I-10 eastbound.