Monday, August 28th … Another Set-Back

Kerrie’s Transplant Surgeon came to see Kerrie today and we were hoping she would be able to give us a firm date to start procedures for the transplant.

Instead she gave us, in her words, “some bad news”. Although everything had been going very well last week, all tests showed she was going into remission and the doctor was planning on going ahead with the bone marrow transplant, her recent tests indicate she is not in remission.

Her Luekemia blast cells have come back very quickly and we will need to begin Chemo-Therapy again. Kerrie will undergo a few more tests tomorrow, have her catheter removed
( and replaced with one in her arm.. or the other side of her neck) and Chemo will begin again on Wednesday morning.

Although the first round of Chemo was very aggressive, it didn’t quite do the trick.. so the next round will be even more aggressive. We hope she will sail through this one, as well as she did the last round, but it is more likely that she will experience more of the illness, etc. that was expected the first time around.

I will stay with her until Wednesday, when I have to return to Ohio. Mom will be with her after that. Ron and Dad will be here when they can, and I plan on returning next Monday.

At this point, Dr. Jana says we do not need to stop all her visitors, but she has asked that we limit her visitors to one or two people a day.. including us.

There always seems to be someone who wants to come and visit Kerrie ( She’s just so popular), but we will need to make sure she doesn’t already have other visitors or hasn’t had too many visitors that day.

She’s remaining as upbeat as she can, but this news hit us kind of hard. We had been told, from the very beginning, that she may need two rounds of Chemo before we could proceed but she had done so well… and we were only waiting for Dr. Jana to set an exact date for transplant.

We’re hopeful this will work, the second time around, and only delay things another 4 or 5 weeks.

Keep Kerrie in your thoughts…

Jenn