Hello Friends!

 

Sorry it has been so long since I have updated the site.  I am aware there have been some errors with the website too.  Let me catch you up on what is going on.

 

John is currently home in Cedar City at his parent's house.  After his stay at the Hilton hotel in Salt Lake, he had an appointment at Huntsman Cancer Institute.  During this appointment, John met with his new doctor and received a second bone marrow biopsy.  It was a little more painful than the first, but John stayed strong and was up for the drive home that day.

 

His new doctor, who is world-renowned for leukemia studies, informed John that we actually caught the cancer at a more advanced stage than we thought.  When John was admitted, his white blood cell count was 14,000 (or 14).  A normal person's WBC count is 3,500 to 10,000.  This puts John in the "higher risk for relapse" group.  The doctors told us that the a relapse, if he would have one, would occur in the first two to three years after he's cured.  To try to prevent this, they are going to make the 2nd through 4th rounds of chemo a little more aggressive than normal for patients for APL.

 

On Friday, John got a call from the hospital letting him know that there were no residual leukemic cells in the bone marrow.  This is great news.  This means that John is now in a type of remission.  He still has to undergo more chemo rounds before he is in "molecular remission".  Molecular remission is where we want to be.  At this point, he is on the road to being cured.

 

Back here in Cedar, John is doing a great job at relaxing and watching TV.  He goes to the indoor track at Southern Utah University and walks one to two miles per day.  He is trying to regain his strength.  He has a check up at the Huntsman on April 15th, and is tentatively scheduled to start his second round of chemo on April 18th.

 

With that being said, I will not be updating the blog until April 15th at the earliest.  Check back then, and have a great week!