Just a quick update to let everyone know that Eli had a bone marrow biopsy on Tuesday morning and the results weren’t what we were hoping for. Instead of finding 0 leukemic blasts in his bone marrow, they found 30%. That means the chemo Eli went through 4 weeks ago really didn’t do what we were hoping. Since the leukemic blasts have to be under 18% in order to proceed with a transplant, we are going to head out to NYC today (Friday) and go straight to inpatient so Eli can start a more toxic chemo on Monday to hopefully get those blasts down. While it’s possible to undergo transplant with some blasts (because the transplant chemo and the donor’s cells help kill the leukemia as well), the best case scenario is to go into it in remission.
This will definitely make Eli’s transplant harder as he won’t be going into it as strong as he would have without this extra harsh round of chemo before hand. We wanted to do the chemo in NY so that he could go straight from chemo to transplant without having to worry about him being in good enough shape to transfer from Iowa to NY. As it is, we are checking out this morning from Blank, flying to Newark via Minneapolis, then checking right into inpatient at MSKCC tonight. He will have to wear a mask on both flights as his counts are still zero from the last round of chemo.
So, we packed up last night and today we start our long stint in our second home of Manhattan! Thanks to everyone who gave Eli one last farewell and to everyone that paid him a visit while he was in Des Moines. He loved having the visitors and that will definitely be one thing he misses while he’s in NY. So if anyone is planning their upcoming Christmas or Spring breaks, may I suggest that NYC is a great place to visit? 😀
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