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MDS
Hi Teo,
Your mother ought to control if she still needs medication for hypertension and high cholesterol - perhaps she doesn't have these symtoms now.
There are patients - like me - who have antibodies at dx. Mine probably developed after pregnancies. As far as I understand it is common that patients show antibodies after txs. Every time we receive blood they test our blood and if we have antibodies they control which antibodies we have so they can find blood that is OK.
I don't know why your mother can't receive blood a few hours after the blood test. If your sister is following her to the lab your sister could ask the nurses this question.
It is true that Vidaza/Dacogen are expensive and many patients have adverse effects. A little more than 50% of patients with high-risk MDS respond. The results for low-risk patients are very different in different studies. At least 2 studies show that low-risk patients who need at least 4 units of blood during 8 weeks show lower respond rates.
The big problem is that we still don't know for sure if your mother has MDS. If she har RA the most common treatment is EPO-drug combined with Neupogen or a similar drug if her serum-EPO initially was less than 500. You should concentrate on (1) getting info about her dx. If it really is RA you have to (2) get info about serum-EPO initially.
Good that your mother is doing fine!
Kind regards
Birgitta-A
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