[Cmall]

I am new here but have had to deal with other forums in the past. They are sanity savers in so many ways as I'm sure I will find out here. My 76 year old father in law was recently diagnosed with MDS. He comes from a small town in Missouri and was at a hospital there, then moved to a nursing home. We don't know for sure but it seems he waited a long time before seeing any doctors and that was an emergency trip to the hospital.

The hemo/onc there tells us that is you have one specific gene you can be treated for MDS but without the gene there is no treatment. Well of course my father in law does not have that gene therefore no treatment other than procrit and transfusions. In using my laymen knowledge reading the pathology report I'm just not convinced it is MDS or maybe just MDS alone and certainly don't know what type he has nor what stage. The doc has been asked but we aren't getting straight answers although this doctor has taken the time to return phone calls and explained some things. Oops I'm starting to babble here.

As I said he is in a nursing home now for physical therapy to try and strengthen him though they don't seem to give much hope that he will ever go home. Today my husband received a call from the nursing home saying that his hemoglobin had dropped to 7.7 and they want to send him over to the hospital for a transfusion. My husband says fine but they have to ask his dad............although we knew there was a chance he would refuse. He did. I guess my main questions at this point are we crazy for not trying to get more info and maybe have the pathology slide sent elsewhere? He was a healthy man except for this and high blood pressure. The other question is what will happen most likely since he refused the transfusion besides us knowing he will get weaker. Will his counts keep dropping? Also his white count was 11 point something. They told us he wasn't producing white blood cells so how can that elevate?

Any info would be greatly appreciated and I will search more in the other posts to this site and see what I can find out.

Thanks and my best to all of you.
Cheryl