[StephM]

Hi everyone! I just found this forum and i've been browsing on it all day. You can't imagine how happy i am to find a place where i can get information and feel like we are not alone. My little brother was diagnosed with AA in july and it seems that he is the only case the hospital has ever had. AA seems to be even less common in france than anywhere else. I could not find anything interesting on the net and there is no forum like this one. Your stories give me hope- some people here with the same disease are doing great years after their diagnosis.
Our doctors are doing everything they can to treat my brother as they should. He has no related donor ,so they decided to give him ATG. They managed to get horse ATG (rabbit ATG is normally the only one available in Europe but they were aware of NIH recent report about the superiority of horse as a first treatment)
He started ATG on Sept 15th and is still in hospital. They keep him at least 5 weeks. He is now on cyclosporin only. He is having serum sickness (first a rash, then terrible joint pain which are gone, now awful stomach ache, a little temperature and high blood pressure). I can't imagine undergoing this at home.
What I'm worried about is his kidneys. His urine is very dark and we were told that it was caused by cyclosporin which seems to be toxic for his kidneys . They diminished the dosage but he will have to take this medicine for months. Does someone know more about that? What is the risk for his kidneys?