June 7
Yesterday I saw my doctors for the first follow-up since leaving hospital. It turns out I'm semi-officially in remission! (According to Martha, 'It's a good thing!')
It's semi-official because remission requires two criteria: 1) Blast cells (the bad guys) have to be below 5%, and mine are at 3%, down from 20% before I started treatment, and 2) Neutrophil count (type of white blood cell) should be over 1.0. My neutrophils are still at 0.5 but creeping up slowly.
The upshot of this is I now move on to phase 2 of the treatmnent, which is called Consolidation Chemotherapy. This involves outpatient chemotherapy a few days a month, and will continue for several months to keep the blasts in check. The alternative would have been to start over at the beginning with another round of 30 days in hospital, which I was very much looking forward to never ever doing again. Fished my wish!
WOO HOO!!! for the semi-remission. I look forward to further woo-hoo's and, perhaps, even an alright or two when its full rem state.
ReplyDeleteWRKAH
Very glad to hear that! Remember the "have faith that you'll be good sooner than you think". I do! Have a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteWRKAR