Day 6 after Transplant = Good News No WBC's

Happy 4th of July 2012


Here is an update on Jodi's progress. 


Last Thursday 06/28/12 she was infused with her own stem cells. These are pure undifferentiated cells that will take home in her bone marrow and receive signals to grow and differentiate into New Bone Marrow. A true miracle.


She is now at day 6 and we are watching her White Blood Cells (WBC) drop down. We want her to go to 0.0 WBC's. Once she hits 0.0 her body will then signal the stem cells to start differentiating and grow into new healthy bone marrow.


GOOD NEWS:
Here is how she has been progressing:
 6/29 WBC's: 3.9
6/30 WBC's: 1.3
7/01 WBC's: 1.0
7/02 WBC's: 0.5
7/03 WBC's: 0.3
7/04 WBC's: 0.0 This is excellent news!

She hit 0.0 2 days earlier than her last transplant which is a great prognostic indicator. Now we watch the stem cell graft take hold and start to work. If all goes well we will see a steady climb in her WBC count. Usually it takes a few days to start working and for the new healthy bone marrow to produce new WBC's.

Last time around she was very sick and out of it completely and it took longer for her WBC's to hit 0.0 and 7 - 10 days to grow and develop new WBC's back to a normal level of ~4.0. Once she hits a normal WBC level and remains afebrile then she will get to leave the hospital.

Last time around she hit WBC count of 0.0 of day 8 of transplant and was at a normal WBC level on day 15 and then discharged on day 17. This time she hit 0.0 at day 6 and we watch now and wait and see. If she continues on her current path she could hit a normal WBC in the next week or so and then hopefully be discharged a couple of days later.

 She is doing very well!! Thank you for all of the love and support.

She is positive and doing well but she is still sick and dealing with the side effects from the chemotherapy.

A brief explanation of why these chemotherapy drugs cause certain side effects: 

First she received a poison that shut her immune system down and essentially turned her worsening bone marrow off. This is the medication that has so many bad side effects. It attacks rapidly dividing cells. Most cancers are rapidly dividing cells, growing out of control. They have lost the ability to be inhibited by the body.

Cancer cells are a lot like teenagers, they have lost all inhibition and just ignoring all the signals to stop, the cells like teenagers, think they know everything and the rebel cells keep dividing and growing. The medication recognizes rapidly dividing cells and stops the growth.

This is good and bad because we have normal cells in our body that are not cancerous but still rapidly divide. For example, the tissue linking our mouths and entire gastrointestinal tract are all rapidly dividing cells. This is why mouth injuries heal very quickly. The cells are constantly replacing themselves with new cells. The chemotherapy that Jodi receives not only attacks the rapidly dividing cancer cells in her bone marrow but also attacks her normal rapidly dividing cells in her mouth GI tract, hair etc. Hence the noxious side effects.