BMT or not?

[kmartino07]

I was recently diagnosed with AA in July, I was pregnant at the time of diagnosis and after talking it over with my doctors and talking with my family we thought it was best to terminate pregnancy. While pregnant my counts were dropping so fast i had to have several transfusions. Now that Im no longer pregnant my counts are actually a little more stable. My last blood transfusion was on 9/4/15 i have been at 9.3 since and my platelets are 32 which actually went up from 28! last platelet transfusion was on 8/15/15. I have mentioned this to my drs' team and they are looking into it. My doctors feel because of my age and health i am a good candidate for transplant and i have a donor match. (my brother). my thing is i feel like i can afford to look into some other type of treatment being that my counts although are still low but dropping nearly as fast as they once were. Anybody ever heard of such a thing? Any advice or comments? I plan to go this with my dr but in the mean time im just literally lost with this whole thing.

[Marlene]

I'm very sorry this disease hit you at such an important time of your life. It's not easy for anyone and it's especially difficult when you are pregnant. If you haven't already, get a second opinion. How much experience does your doctor have with aplastic anemia? You want someone who does.

I would not jump into a transplant if things are stable and you are not needing any transfusions. You have time to seek another opinion. You may not be classified as Severe at this point and unless things have changed, they usually don't treat moderate or Non-severe AA. Severe means platelets are under 20K, Retic (corrected for anemia is under 1% and/or ARETIC is low) and your ANC is less than .5.

Have they checked your nutritional levels? Specifically B12, folate, copper, iron, D and zinc? Also your homocysteine and MMA. And if you were taking supplements when they checked them, they could be falsely elevated. Any digestive issues?

What does your white count & ANC count look like? And absolute reticulocyte count look like too?