Update

Hi everyone,

Ever since I finished my last chemo treatments in the early spring of 2004, I've been asking my docs, "What's next, and when?" And I've never gotten really good answers because, as one of my docs in Denver put it, the "best treatment" is a moving target. In other words, there is really no best treatment, just varying perceptions as what might be okay, since none of the available treatments is a actually a cure. I've also gotten varying opinions about the "when" question, because there are no hard and fast guidelines about even when a treatment should start. Survival apparently is not enhanced by early treatment, even if it results in a complete remission. Some folks treat when your white count doubles within a year; some when your platelet counts drop; others when you're feeling badly or are having night sweats. I still don't have any precise answers to any of these questions, but we're getting closer to the "when"part.

My white count is now 87,000, the highest it's ever been. Even when I started my first course of chemo back in 2002, it was "only" 65,000. (Normal is between 3,000 and about 10,000.) At the start of last year my count was about 15,000 or so. My white count,therefore, has gone up six times what is was a year ago. We haven't treated yet because I've been feeling relatively normal, but finally, my local doc thinks we should probably start something and do it within the next few weeks or a month or so.

Now, most of you know that the docs at M. D. Anderson have offered me the opportunity to take part in an experimental study that hopes to use my own immune system to attack the abnormal leukemic cells. They hope to do this by collecting my leukemic cells and treating them with viral DNA, then putting them back in me so my T-lymphocytes (the other kind; my leukemic cells are abnormal B-lymphocytes) will learn to recognize them as "foreign" and attack and kill them off. The second phase of that study, which I've been invited to join, should be starting soon, maybe just in time. So far the study has neither killed nor cured anyone, after preliminary trials on ten brave souls. My local doc has been a bit hesitant for me to take part, thinking that this cure might, indeed, be worse than my disease (people have randomly, unexpectedly died during gene therapy trials). He's thinking that we should consider more mainstream chemotherapy, like that I've already done or similar regimens. But, like my other docs, it's not clear which, if any, of these other regimens might be "best." But, he's going to call my doc in Houston and they're going to decide on what they think I ought to do. That'll be nice, 'cause for several months now I've been caught between the two schools of thought; that I should do the study regimen and that I shouldn't. Hopefully they'll talk it over and come to a conclusion that they both agree on, so we can proceed. I'm kinda wanting to do the new study, but will be a royal pain because we'll have to spend a lot of time in Houston, at our own expense, and that will also involve a lot of travel back and forth between home and Houston, about a 600 mile round trip. But, bottom line, we'll start something again within weeks, and it may or may not be the new protocol. I'll keep you posted.

Any questions?

Dave