Josh went for his regular labwork this month and everything was good, other than some elevated liver enzymes. Since he started the Tasigna treatments his numbers have been bouncing around, and this month they just happened to be up. They didn't want to treat it or change his Tasigna dosage, but they did say it is important to keep an eye that it is just bouncing up and down and not trending upward. I just got on the MD Anderson site and looked at all of his labs from the last year to get a real idea of what is going on. I know it seems from the outside that not much is going on with Josh's body but on the inside things are constantly changing! Not a month goes by where his numbers are staying the same - one month a certain thing is up, the next month it's down.
Despite this changes, overall he is doing phenomenally well! As a matter of fact, his bone marrow results came back with some amazing results! Mostly it is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo, but his PCR results are a bit easier to understand. So far his results have been:
- April 2011 - 91.43 %
- July 2011 - 5.19 %
- October 2011 - .09 %
I know most of you don't care about this, but for strangers coming to the blog dealing with your own diagnosis I want to show what the MDA lab report says about how they measure PCR. I have seen on other blogs when it is reported differently and it can be confusing. This is what the report says:
Coexpression of b3a2 and b2a2 BCR-ABL fusion transcripts is detected byreal-time PCR.
The percentage of BCR-ABL to ABL transcripts is 91.43.
COMMENT: Quantitative real-time PCR analysis performed on RNA from thissample for the BCR-ABL fusion transcript resulting from the t(9;22) inleukemia. BCR-ABL and ABL transcript levels are detected simultaneouslyand quantitative results expressed as the ratio of BCR-ABL to ABL levels.This ratio may vary up to one-log because of methodological reasons. Asof 8/2/07, the assay has shifted to a new platform.
Hopefully that explains it to those of you looking for specifics. I have gotten so many emails from strangers and fellow CML sufferers and caregivers as a result of this blog. I sincerely hope that you all find something of use here in what we have written. Even if it is just to have the comfort of knowing you are not alone on this path!
We appreciate your continued prayers, especially for Josh's liver! We also have another prayer request that I will hopefully blog about later this week. We have REALLY appreciated those of you taking the time to shop Amazon through our link! I have no idea who it is, but we have already made enough to pay off one of the 30 MD Anderson bills sitting on our desk! Thank you, thank you!!
