Hello Wassi. I'm sorry to hear about your father's condition. A low red cell count from MDS would explain his fatigue and why he was especially affected at high altitude, where there's less oxygen in each breath you take.
It makes sense that the first priorities have been to take care of the immediate symptoms and to try to identify the source of the fever, and that the next priority is to review the diagnosis and determine the appropriate treatment plan.
The
Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center at U.C. San Diego treats MDS; see their
info page. They are a National Cancer Insitute (NCI)
Comprehensive Cancer Center. If you are at a different hospital, you could
contact them about getting a second opinion.
MDS is usually not genetic, so it's surprising that your uncle also had MDS. Make sure your father's doctors know about your uncle's history. Perhaps your father and his brother shared exposure to an environmental factor like benzene that is associated with MDS, although figuring out how to treat him now is more important than guessing how he might have gotten MDS.
If you want to get more information about MDS, you can get a free information packet from the
Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation (AA&MDSIF). There's also a good MDS handbook that you can download (PDF file, 164K) from the MDS Foundation; click "Understanding Myelodysplastic Syndromes: A Patient Handbook" on their
Patient Information page.
You can also ask questions here, where other patients and caregivers share what they know, and you can look through the links in our
Resources section to find other websites and organizations that can help you and your father.