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Thank all of you for your supportive comments. This is such a difficult disease with no clear-cut answers. Depending on which doctor you ask, my husband is RCMD Int-1 according to regular oncologist, and low risk MDS by the doctor at Emory. The regular oncologist gave my husband a prognosis of 1 to 6 years and the doctor at Emory said 10 to 15, hopefully, and then it will go into AML if he doesn't respond to any treatment or a cure is not found.
He has had two bone marrow biopsies (two different labs) which we learned on Friday showed different cytogenetics. I think that one lab mistakenly put a 3 instead of an 8 on the report, but this is only a guess on my part.
First biopsy on 5/12/2010 showed: 46,XY,t(8;21)(q23:q22.1)[17]
Second biopsy on 9/13/2010 showed: 46,XY,t(3;21)(q26;q22)[18]/49 idem,+8,+8,+9[2]
I have no idea what any of this means, although I have researched online to try and understand it. The doctor has said that my husband has a rare chromosome abnormality and there is only one other case with his specific chromosome abnormalities.
My husband so far has only low platelets (they have been as low as 38,000 and a high around 53,000). His HCT is 35.9, HGB 12.0, RBC 3.59, WBC 6.7. He has never had to have a transfusion. His only symptom is fatigue.
If anyone can interpret any of this for me, I would be very grateful. It is scary as the latest lab (as I stated in an earlier post) says:
"Although there is no significant increase in blasts, significant peripheral thrombocytopenia and cytogenetic findings suggest an unfavorable prognosis."
I'll post tomorrow after I talk to our regular oncologist. We are scheduled to see him in the morning and begin round 6 of Vidaza, which we are going to go ahead with. We have a call in to Emory doctor to tell him we have decided we do not want to do the clinical trial.
Thanks again for everyone's help. I couldn't get through this without all of you.
Linda
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