[stayinghopeful]

Today we went for my dad's first session of chemo. We met with his doctor beforehand and got a few of our questions answered. They are still waiting for the cytogenetics test, which he said will take about 2 more weeks. He explained that we will not know the severity of his MDS until we get those results back.

My dad got his first ever session of chemo. He is taking Vidaza 7 times a week. They injected 3 shots (a total of 6 mL) into his stomach today. He feels fine. I'm not sure if the chemo will worsen his condition or not. The doctor warned us that his counts may drop while he is on treatment. Thus, he asked for weekly blood test just to monitor his condition.

Before we met with the doctor today, we got a blood test. His stats are as follow:
-WBC-5.8
-RBC 3.3
-Hb-10.0
-platelet- 68

His cell counts, the doctor explained, are good for now. He had gotten a total of 4 blood unit last week (2 on Tues and 2 on Thurs).

The only thing I'm scared about now is that his WBC have slightly decreased from what they were. On 8/29, they were 8.7. This was the day before we rushed him to the ER because of the low RBC count. I'm worried that the cancer in his bone marrow is staring to show its affects of the WBC, too..

Lastly, I asked for a copy of his BMB report today. It is quite confusing reading it because there are so many different blast percentages and I don't really know what to look at. Hopefully someone could help me out. In the report, it says:

-peripheral blood has 11% circulating blasts
-bone marrow, aspirate and core biopsy- 19% blasts and excess blasts-2
-bone marrow aspirate, flow cytometric immunophenotyping- 15.4% CD32- positive blasts

The report also says that he falls into the refractory anemia with excess blast-2 and the diagnosis was MDS with possible AML.

Doctor also briefly spoke to us about transplant. He said that the siblings will be tested first and if there is no match, they will look within the database. if still no match, he said we should visit a hospital that work with cord blood. What are your thoughts about that?

I know and understand none of this is good news. I'm so worried and can not stop crying. I think about this all day and night.

PLease help me out. I don't know what other news I can possibly take ;(