1/30/06

Hey everyone, sorry it's been awhile since I sent word. Jen was discharged from Inova Fairfax on Friday, January 20th. Her counts were recovering, and she was feeling good (that is to say that if they didn't let her go, she was going to stage on escape!) We spent a nice weekend home, and she was back at work on Monday after visiting the doctors office to have her blood drawn. However, the good news didn't last long....her oncology doctor called to say that her blood draw had shown that her leukemia had not gone into remission as hoped, and he was recommending her to a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital for what he called a "more novel approach" towards treating the cancer. We headed up to Baltimore on Tuesday, and her new doctor confirmed that she had leukemic blasts in her blood, and admitted her. She has been enrolled in a clinical trial program testing a new, not yet approved drug in the hopes of knocking the cancer into remission. He also let us know that Jen would most likely need a bone marrow transplant regardless. Jen's sister had got tested and typed when she visited at the end of December. A little silver lining to this dark cloud, so far it looks like she is a match, which is the best news we could have. Keep your fingers crossed that the final verdict is that she's a match....the complications of a transplant are less with a family member as a match as opposed to a stranger. So in short, we are back to battling, only this time I can't be with her nearly as much (Baltimore is over an hour away, and the hospital will only allow me to stay overnight one night a weekend). Please keep us in your prayers; we need them now more than ever. If you want to give her a call, her hospital # is 410-502-0338. Thank you again for all the support and well wishes....I hope you all know how much they mean.


Love,

Jeremy