[mausmish]

Hi Greg,

I'm planning a bone marrow transplant as soon as a donor can be found. I'm having a great response to Vidaza but there's no way of knowing when it will quit working. I've had consultations with oncologists from several different centers. They disagree on some of the finer recommendations about pre-transplant conditioning and post-transplant treatments but they all agree vehemently that I need a transplant, the sooner the better. It took a few months for my husband and me to accept this but we are charging forward now. Interestingly, one of the points of disagreement among the doctors is whether to do a SCT or a BMT. One doctor said it is believed but unproven that stem cell transplants are more effective but my doctor at Johns Hopkins says they do only bone marrow for allogenic unrelated donor transplants because it reduces the incidence of gvhd. I'm having full myleoblative conditioning. Fortunately, my health (apart from the MDS) is quite good and the doctors are concerned about my high chance of relapse due to all the chromosome abnormalities and the number of blasts and pancytopenia when I was first diagnosed in January.

Next week is treatment cycle 10 with Vidaza. Hard to believe the time is flying by so quickly! Vidaza has been a real life saver for me. If you've read the research, you've seen that the way that it works is extremely interesting, as well.

I hope all goes well for you, too. I'm enjoying your forum posts.

Karen