{"id":1145,"date":"2010-07-19T23:09:41","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T06:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2010-07-19T23:21:21","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T06:21:21","slug":"how-many-oncologists-does-it-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/how-many-oncologists-does-it-take\/","title":{"rendered":"How many oncologists does it take…"},"content":{"rendered":"

First off, I’ve been dreading the Wednesday meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 We are supposed to go in and meet with the oncologist in charge of our case and discuss the results of the last marrow biopsy and spinal fluid biopsy.\u00c2\u00a0 Results of greater than 0.1% leukemia cells would get us another two weeks of induction and 0.1% or less would take us to phase 2 of the treatment.\u00c2\u00a0 I have been a pillar of faith through most of this, knowing and believing in the outcome even if Angelica and I (and the rest of our family) have to walk it out, but we’ve had so many unexpected<\/span> bad experiences so far that I kind of knew what the results were going to be… we were for sure gonna have two more weeks of induction.<\/p>\n

Enter Monday Morning… Patti comes down the stairs as I am thinking about making coffee and says, Angelica has an infected toe.\u00c2\u00a0 It was an ingrown toenail that had developed some redness and puss.\u00c2\u00a0 A quick phone call to confirm… they want to see her at the clinic at Children’s.\u00c2\u00a0 No fever, No other symptoms, but we head off to Children’s without coffee… and this all seems so ridiculous because we have to come in on Wednesday anyway for our meeting.<\/p>\n

With a suppressed immune system, any infection can spread unchecked and any infection could be fatal, so even a toenail gets thoroughly checked out.\u00c2\u00a0 At one point the three most senior oncologists that were in the clinic that day were all in our exam room looking at her toe… at which point I wanted to start a round of jokes with: “How many oncologists does it take to treat an ingrown toenail?”<\/p>\n

They decided to double check her blood counts and prescribed some antibiotic pills that she can take at home and as soon as we got the results back from the blood and the script got filled, we could go home.\u00c2\u00a0 This was amazing to hear, because I was sure they were going to tell me that she needed to stay for a couple days.<\/p>\n

While we were waiting for the script to get filled, our ‘coordinating nurse’ came in all excited and said “Has Tim come and seen you yet, the marrow results are in?” (Tim is our senior onc)\u00c2\u00a0 We were not expecting that they would be in till at least Tuesday.\u00c2\u00a0 I said no and she informed me with great delight that Geli was MRD negative and then left the room.\u00c2\u00a0 While I was happy that she was happy, it took me a second on my blackberry to google the possible definitions of “MRD<\/a>“.\u00c2\u00a0 It stands for Minimal Residual Disease.\u00c2\u00a0 So to be MRD Negative means that there is not even a minimal amount of the leukemia cells in her marrow.\u00c2\u00a0 It means that she is at 0.00% leukemia cells in her marrow.<\/p>\n

A little aside here… There are at least four stages of leukemia treatment in youths.\u00c2\u00a0 The first stage is getting to MRD negative or at least a low number MRD.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like a baseball inning that does not end till the third out, they keep treating until the desired result is met.\u00c2\u00a0 This means that we can go on to stage 2 and greatly increases her odds of never having a relapse. The other thing to note is that leukemia is mainly active in the marrow of the bones, but it can “hide” in lymph nodes, liver and a host of other places.\u00c2\u00a0 The next stages are designed to “flush” it out and get rid of it in everywhere it is known to hide.\u00c2\u00a0 So there are various drugs, and various chemo treatments that are administered in a specific order.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

This news was a bit of a blessing, because it took what I was preparing to be a negative meeting and completely derailed it.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we know what to expect, there is nothing to “brace” ourselves for, there is no Wednesday meeting to decide… it is all laid out and planned.\u00c2\u00a0 At this stage of the process and our family and our lives, having some variables removed is WONDERFUL.\u00c2\u00a0 There is chemo and there are side-effects that come with the various stages, but at least we know when they are coming and what to do to prepare for them.\u00c2\u00a0 This road doesn’t become easier, just a lot more planned out.<\/p>\n

We asked for prayer for the Wednesday meeting, for good results, for God’s hand and His peace on us.\u00c2\u00a0 God has been on today, right from the beginning of getting us in there with a toenail. (and we did come home and she is feeling better)<\/em> Thanks to everyone for the prayers and support.<\/p>\n

Jon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First off, I’ve been dreading the Wednesday meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 We are supposed to go in and meet with the oncologist in charge of our case and discuss the results of the last marrow biopsy and spinal fluid biopsy.\u00c2\u00a0 Results of greater than 0.1% leukemia cells would get us another two weeks of induction and 0.1% or … Continue reading “How many oncologists does it take…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gelica","category-health","category-jon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1149,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}