Marcia's News for Christmas Eve ~ December 24th

Hello Everyone and Merry Christmas!

We have some very good news to share today. As we told you in our last entry, Marcia's situation had become very dire because she developed 'Acute Graft versus Host Disease' (GVHD) and it did not respond at all to the most effective treatment of more than a week of steroids and other drugs. It was then decided to try a treatment called ATG, which consisted of four days of increasingly heavy chemotherapy. They did not know if this would work and there were two (at least) big dangers with it. The first was that because it is such a "heavy" protocol she would not tolerate it well and could not complete it. The second was that if it worked the way it should, it would significantly lower her already severely low immune system.

Now to the good news. She tolerated the treatment very well and the results of testing last Friday came in yesterday and the GVHD is GONE! The treatment worked. Marcia is now on what they tell us will be a very long and very gradual road to recovery. Her situation is still very serious but not nearly as grave as it was when we reported before. As Pat put it, it's gone from hour to hour to day to day, and under the circumstances that's a very good thing.

She does have several "normal" side effects from this course of treatment... really severe edema - water retention we always called it - that they need to let nature treat because to give her diuretics right now could work against the bigger process. She has 30 to 40 pounds of water weight and edema blisters from this but they assure us that this should self correct with time. She also had to go onto insulin for a bit because apparently coming off of heavy steroids messes with your insulin levels. And she had a heart murmur that was thoroughly tested and they think will not cause big problems and will resolve in time. She is very weak right now and that is frustrating for her but she continues to participate fully in physical and occupational therapy. She hates it, but she does it.

So.... This is all very very good news. In fact it is just about the best news we could have gotten all things considered. It still is not going to be easy or quick, and there are still many other things that can go wrong all along the way, but this was a huge hurdle and she cleared it in an almost miraculous way.

We want to wish all of you a very happy and very blessed Christmas. We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers and we ask that you do the same for all of us.

Merry Christmas!!
Love!!
Marcia's Family