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Thank you to Eric Grubbs and Jay Morosetti for driving down here from Pittsburgh with our car! Sorry you had to try and leave again during Spring Break fever! It was terrific to see Paul Miller, Rob Russian and John Marrin - Jason's college friends. If nothing else, you made him laugh for almost 48 hours straight and certainly picked up his spirits. We can always use some of that. Thanks again for all of the cards and pictures we've been getting from people. Our map (with the pushpins on it) is certainly filling up, as is the poster board with all the pictures. It will be great for his hospital room when he's finally ready for the transplant.---------------------------------------------------------- Peggy took Jason for his routine blood work Wednesday morning and the report was not good. The blast count in his blood jumped way up to 72% (normal is 0-5%). It was only 9% last Friday. It is a clear indication that his bone marrow must be packed with blasts and they are leaking out into his bloodstream in high numbers. They were able to get in to see Dr. Cortez relatively quickly without an appointment and he told uthem frankly that he wasn’t pleased with the counts, but feels we should try one more round of the drug because it gave us good results for a week and it didn’t seem to be toxic to Jason. He is going to try to start it on Friday and also get it increased to a higher strength. The doctor tried to put the best spin he could on it saying that we can’t be sure of anything until the bone marrow test is done on Friday. But 72% blasts is not good. At his worst last August he was at 85%. Ironically, the blood sample from the potential “perfect” match is expected to come in today from overseas. It has the same quirk that Jason has in his blood and the hope is that it will be "the" donor. We won’t know that for another 3 weeks. We are at least 4 weeks away from a transplant (with the necessary testing and such needed to get the sample ready) – and the doctor made it clear that Jason is far from being ready to have one. It seemed things were going so well. He had no reaction to the drug and was able to enjoy playing golf and spending the weekend with his college friends. We are grateful that at least he had that time. But we let ourselves relax and forgot how quickly things can change with this disease. It seems now that the bone marrow test will be anti-climatic – the results will more than likely show that the disease is not under control. We came here for a transplant and Jason is ready to try whatever is necessary to get there. The transplant doctor emailed just now that she is giving us her word that they will do a transplant – donor marrow, cord blood, or use Lex’s marrow with T-Cells removed. At least we have that to hold on to. I wish I had better news but this is what we’re dealing with right now.
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