Marrowforums - Quick update

Just wanted to pass along news of my progress here. It has now been 2 years since I was told that I had redeveloped chromosomal abnormalities roughly 6 months after my transplant in February of 2014. It was an early relapse but I was given 6 cycles of Vidaza and started to improve from the very first dose. I had a pretty rough 2015 and spent about 90 days in the hospital with various infections, pneumonia, an indeterminate infection, and really bad pain in my hips and shoulder from avascular necrosis. 2016 has been much kinder to me as I have now had both hips replaced and both of my eyes have been corrected to get rid of cataracts that I developed from treatment.

Today I received the results of my most recent biopsy and it was good news all around. For the first time in 6 years, I had normal cellularity in my marrow. My marrow is 100% donor cells, there aren't any dysplastic cells, and there aren't any blasts. My WBC line finally has a normal number and percentage of lymphocytes - again for the first time in 6 years. RBC and platelets were normal as well. I know that it is still early in the game, but the results were nice to see. I am still working against some cGVHD issues in my gut, skin, and occasionally eyes and lungs I suspect, but overall have seen a lot of improvement this year and look forward to continuing toward normal, whatever that is.

The reason I share this is that there have been a lot of members that have encountered difficulties after transplant with GVHD and relapse, and in some cases downstream problems like I have had with the AVN and cataracts. I don't regret the decision in any way, but it is a long road with lots of hairpin turns, so you don't always see what is coming at you.