Mike's Email

Thursday, December 24, 2009
email from Mike

All,

This morning, Dr. Gupta (the Plano Oncologist Dad has been seeing for the last nine months) visited Dad and gave him an update, while Mom, Sheri and I were in the room. His bedside manner is just what one would hope for in this situation.

He has diagnosed Dad as moving from pre-Leukemia to acute Leukemia. He is recommending that Dad start today on a treatment regimen to attack this new diagnosis. His diagnosis is based on the increase in white-blood cell counts over the last 48 hours since Dad was admitted to the hospital. The cell count doubled from Wednesday to Thursday from about 42,000 to over 82,000 this morning. Dr. Gupta is optimistic that Dad will respond and he is anxious to get this started since the white blood counts are increasing so rapidly—waiting to start the treatment is not a good option.

The treatment he will begin today is “Induction Chemo” Therapy. This is the same treatment that has been in use for the last 20 years. Treatment will begin later today with one medicine for 3 days and then the follow on medicine for the next 7 days.

The goal of this treatment is to kill off the leukemia and bring Dad into remission. They will do another bone marrow test (about 10-12 days from now) at the end of the regiment to measure the success of the Induction Chemo Therapy.

At that point their hope is that all the cancer cells have been destroyed or that a small percentage of cells exist and can be destroyed over some further treatments. For the next 18-20 days, Dad will have very low white blood cell counts and great risk of infection. Dr. Gupta has cautioned that we wash and use mask when visiting to reduce the risk of germs to Dad but the greater risk is infections from within the body—things that the while blood cells would normally fight off but can’t because of the chemo. During the chemo treatment they will give Dad antibiotics and platelet and other infusions to help him to fight off infections.

One concern is that generally patients coming out of Pre-Leukemia, as Dad has been diagnosed, do not respond to the Chemo, so they will monitor closely the results after the 3/7 treatment. If Dad does respond to the treatment, then he will go home in 25-26 days.

So where are we? We have a long hospital stay ahead of us and lots of coordinating to do. Dad is feeling better and we talked last night for 2-4 hours off and on. He was coherent and very thoughtful, talking over politics, memories and corporate experiences with the EPA and other government negotiations he led at Campbell Taggart. Stories I’ve never heard and maybe only I could understand since I did work in the bakery in college. Anyway, we are moving forward.

Today they are installing a pick line so they can administer the chemo medicines and doing a heart “echo” scan right now for a baseline to measure the possible side effects of the chemo medicines on the cardio system. They will be moving Dad to another room shortly, so the new room will be on the 4th floor.

Dr. Gupta will be in charge of all the treatment and coordinating with the colon specialist and the infectious disease specials and stay in contact with Mom and Dad and all hospital operations.
And Mom will be here also.

Updates coming regularly.

Mike ( with Mom’s critique)