Marcia's news for Monday August 10th

Hello Everyone! Lots of news today.

First, the effects of the chemo have hit to some degree... not anywhere as hard as they might have and as they may yet, but now she is really, really tired. To be expected, but of course no fun at all.

For that reason we are going to limit visits to 20 minutes and we've unplugged the phone because it was ringing so much she couldn't get any rest.

In addition, because of the high susceptibility to infection, we are now going to have to go with no outside food or drink for her at all, along with no flowers or plants. In other words, please don't bring her anything organic at all... to eat or drink or to have in her room.

And as usual, no, no, no visits with even a remote possiblity of direct or indirect exposure to illness...! Our job now is to keep her from getting sick with anything (and keep her blood numbers right) until she can have a bone marrow transplant.

The transplant donor search process has begun through the search coordinator on her medical team. It turns out that none of her family who have been tested are matches, however the possibility of an unrelated match seems pretty strong, in part because there are many volunteers of a Scandinavian heritage.

The timing for a transplant is not yet clear and that is being discussed and decided. There may be another round of chemo first or, if a viable donor is available, it may be done soon or even right away. We'll let you know as soon as we know anything more on that.

We'll probably be updating these pages every other or every few days instead of every day as right now there's not a lot of new information on a daily basis. She's just following along with the process and it's going very well. Of course any big news we'll post right away!

Thanks again to everyone!
Marcia's Family