[Greg H]

Hi Cheryl!

Welcome to the vocal portion of the bone marrow warrior club. There are lots of folks smarter than me about aplastic anemia around here, which is good, since they can correct all the stuff I am about to say. (I'm an MDS guy.)

I think you've got some good docs -- too smart to treat stuff they shouldn't be treating. As I understand it, from listening to other folks around here, aplastic anemia is more or less diagnosed through a process of elimination. So, if you have messed up bone marrow, but you don't have leukemia and you don't have MDS (or a variety of other stuff) then you more or less have aplastic anemia.

Your marrow is in fact pretty short on cells, but you don't have blasts and you don't have dysplasia (messed up baby blood cells in the marrow), and, evidently, you don't have chromosomal abnormalities, so that pretty much rules out leukemia and MDS. And your marrow seems healthier in this latest BMB, even if it's still not normal.

It might be that way for the rest of your life. Or your hematologist might be right, and it might cycle for some reason. Or it might, at some point in the future, get worse, and then it would makes sense to treat it.

It's hard to know why your marrow isn't normal now. It could be a genetic abnormality you were born with or acquired. It could be some toxin you were exposed to at some point. It could be some long ago infection that triggered a low-grade autoimmune reaction.

It would make sense to make sure you don't have any vitamin or mineral deficiencies and to correct any you do have. It would make sense to eat a well-balanced diet and keep being athletic.

There may be some other things you can do to help your marrow stay strong. I'm going to leave those suggestions to the AA experts here.

It would be good to not obsess about that shoe dropping. A dozen years ago, when I was about your age, I got a call from my aunt, who told me my Dad (with whom I was not in regular communication) was living five states away with a widow he met at a high school reunion, that he was exhibiting signs of dementia, and that his new girlfriend didn't really want to be his caregiver. I retrieved him form the widow, and my wife and I spent the next five years caring for him. One phone call out of the blue, and our lives were irreversibly changed.

In other words, the shoes are going to drop. You just don't know which shoes. And they often aren't the shoes you happen to be focused on.

But it's great that you are healthy now, that you have joined us here, and that you've spoken up. I look forward to hearing more from you.

Take care!

Greg