Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Asteroid

I feel like I'm in one of those asteroid movies and I'm standing on the beach waiting to see if the asteroid is going to hit the planet or if Bruce Willis is going to blow it up in time. I had a CT scan on the 8th and then went to clinic to meet with the doctors in the afternoon. George, who performed my biopsy, was the fellow who examined me. He peppered me with all sorts of questions while examining me and I knew I was going to see Dr. Wilson to explain the biopsy results.

Dr. Wilson explained that I might have something called Myleodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). Essentially my bone marrow is showing damage from the chemo, which they had not seen on the EPOCH protocol. It's also typically seen in adults over 60 and in men. I am an anomoly. He used a lot of big words that I didn't quite catch, but they needed to do more tests to determine how servere it is. On the less severe side, I could have no problems for years but the more severe side could into acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). In addition, my medialstinal and my liver are enlarged. Since my NHL started in the medialstinal, I had a PET scan last Wednesday to check for cancer cells. He also talked about possibly needing a bone marrow transplant, so I had genetic testing done last Monday and another bone marrow biopsy/aspiration. They also mentioned my brother, Michael, might need to get genetic testing to see if he's a match.

I go back to NIH on Thursday to find out the results of all of my tests. I am understandably shaken by this news and I am having a hard time dealing with this news. I am hoping Bruce Willis blows up this asteroid before it gets here. Mike has been a rock as usual, but he is just as shaken as I am. All of our summer plans are on hold until we know what we are facing.

Here's a link to MDS to explain it:
http://www.marrow.org/PATIENT/undrstnd_disease_treat/Lrn_about_disease/MDS/index.html

2 comments:

FirePhrase said...

They can never tell you things in plain English can they? Lucky that your Moms is in the "biz" and can break it down.

Chin up. You're tougher than you know. And we'll keep Bruce on stand by. A girl can always use a little backup.

victory4angela said...

My mom sometimes lack focus so I will have to pin her down for an explanation. I've gotten some good information from some good websites so I undertand a little bit better and can ask some better questions this time.

Maybe Bruce and Ben Affleck can blow it up together. Ah hell, just bring in Wolverine for support!