[rdavidp]

After several bone marrow biopsies/attempts at biopsies since mid-January, my wife, 42 years old, was diagnosed with MDS-RAEB II (8% blast cells) with auer rods and trisomy on chromosome 8 on March 6. Since the beginning of Feb., my wife has been going to John Hopkins for diagnosis and treatment plan. On March 6, our doctor, Hetty Carraway, called us to give us the diagnosis and that she wanted to start full chemo the following week. We had our usual appointment with Dr. Carraway on March 8, and she gave us some more information and went over the full diagnosis. She said she wanted to treat as if my wife did have full blown AML even though she doesn't. The doctor said my wife is in a very high risk category and is afraid that my wife would progress to AML quickly.

My wife was admitted to Hopkins on March 13, and started chemo the next day. She had three days of daunarubicin and cytarabine. She was then given a few days of rest, and started the next chemo drug yesterday. She is now taking Etoposide for three days. Friday will be the last day. Next will be a bone marrow biopsy March 27, and then just watching her as her blood counts go back up. Right now due to chemo white blood cell count is 520 and neutrophil count is 90. The neutrophil count has been dropping drastically each day since the beginning of this week. She is supposed to be in the hospital for 30 days or so. After that, I am not quite sure what will happen immediately, but the doctor said that we will also be doing an ablative bone marrow transplant in the near future too. My wife was adopted and does not know of any brothers or sisters, but she does have several preliminary matches. I am not sure if the process for confirming those matches has started yet or not.

I am curious if anyone here has gone through induction chemo for MDS and what your experience was.