Results of 6-month check-up: All Good

This is Mike reporting on some great news from our trip to Minneapolis earlier this week.

First, pardon my lack of recent submissions. Been a little crazy.

Bonnie and I traveled to Minneapolis this past Sun-Wed in order to have her doctors there conduct a 6-month (post-transplant) biopsy. They also ran the usual battery of blood tests, x-rays etc.

All the potential negative stuff was ruled out. No evidence of any Leukemia blasts were observed in the preliminary bone marrow biopsy. We'll have the final results of that next week, but it all looks good for now. X-rays were all clear.

Her Graft v. Host Disease seems to be intermittent, but quite mild -- actually very mild relative to many of her peers. In fact, the Minneapolis team was pleasantly surprised to discover that the UCSF team currently has Bonnie on zero-drugs. No immunosuppressant drugs. No anti-biotics. Nothing. That speaks volumes about the fact that the GVHD is quite minimal right now -- as you will recall, one of the amazing positive elements of the cord-blood approach she went through vs. the much more common live-donor approach.

They will also run tests for final confirmation that the original cord blood from the boy was the winning donor of the three received. They'll also test for whether or not her new blood-type (O+) has fully manifested itself yet -- and has suppressed her old blood tape (A+).

All her vitals looked good. Her counts are all on track and are at relatively high levels. Her platelets were the highest they have been since the relapse, so she now has the green light to do physical therapy with light weight training, so that she can rebuild muscle mass and tone lost to atrophy.

Along those lines, her weight broke100 lbs. for the first time in over 6 months. She is very excited about that. Now that her cold symptoms have subsided -- from a 5 week bout of RVS, a viral infection that had her laid up in bed -- she can now focus on eating more regularly in combination with the physical therapy.

Despite all the collective anxiety going into the trip, we managed to have some fun & relaxation. Sun night we re-connected with a good number of wonderful, local(Minn) friends who were our support network while there July-Dec. Mon night, the two of us spent the first dinner out alone since the relapse May, 5. Tue night, we dined with a local couple whose experiences have closely mirrored our own -- a young Mom with Leukemia, and a young Dad who spent much of that same July-Dec period at Univ. of MN, Fairview (the Mom's and Bonnie's rooms were right next door to each other); we shared a good number of toasts to recent positive outcomes and the hope for increased normalcy going forward.

All in all -- a great trip that confirmed and codified our suspicions that she was on track. In general, the doctors in Minneapolis were just giddy with Bonnie's results so far (boring is good) and were all commenting about how good she looks. ...But we knew that part already, prior to the trip.

Hope this note finds you well.

Best,
Mike

PS. For more bathtub photos, just click here.