Whitney started feeling a little "weird" last Monday, August the18th. She told Lisa that it felt like the cancer was back. She showed signs of CDF and the doctors started treating that. By Thursday her blood counts were a little off and the doctors ordered a bone marrow biopsy. The biopsy came back full of cancer cells that were just starting to make it to her blood stream.
We met with the doctor on Monday the 25th to figure out what to do. He said that given how strong and fast this cancer is coming back, we were in trouble here. We decided to try a drug newly approved for chemotherapy that shows some promise on FLT3 positive patients. We are looking at a 20% chance that we can get her back into remission. Our only other real option was to go back in patient with the same type of heavy chemotherapy that we started off with. We are looking at about a 20% chance she would make it through the chemotherapy, much less get into remission.
Given the overwhelming bad odds we are dealing with here we really want to be sure that Whitney could try to do some of what she wanted to through this process. We discussed time frames and windows of opportunities. We decided that we were not going to put her back into the hospital and try this newly approved treatment. Current plans are for two 28 day cycles and re-evaluate. No promises and no guarantee of a cure. We are going to try and get her home often and get her to the basketball games as we can.
Live each day to it's fullest, tomorrow is not a given.
