OKLAHOMAN
Member
Taken from an E-Mail I received from my Son.
Last night we heard from one of the Doctors on her team. The Dr. went down to the pathology department and examined the bone marrow herself. Then she consulted with the other Dr's on the team and they concluded that her APL leukemia has indeed returned.
They have already started her treatment with a drug called ATRA today. These are pills that she will take for probably the next 18-24 months. She has taken the ATRA before and handled it well, but it does have some potentially serious pulmonary side effects. They will be watching her very closely to make sure those side effects don't happen.
Tomorrow they are going to start her on a new treatment that they didn't have last time.
Last time they gave her Donarubicon and high-dose ARA-C. These are both very potent chemotherapy drugs and caused her to lose all her hair and made her very sick.
This time instead of those traditional chemo drugs they are going to give her Arsenic! They will be giving her Arsenic intravenously every day for the next several weeks. In 2-4 weeks they say she should be able to come home and have outpatient treatments so this is very different than her previous treatment. This regimen has a very good cure rate – around 90%
Supposedly the side effects are better too. They said that she probably won't lose any hair. The only real side effect is a potential electrical problem in the heart called a prolonged QT interval. This is usually not a problem, but if it's prolonged too much, it can cause some serious heart arrhythmia's. They will be doing EKG's every day to make sure that doesn't happen.
