It's All About The Blasts (plus, Good News)

Leukemia is a cancer affecting the white blood cells, also called leukocytes. In a person with leukemia, new leukocytes fail to mature properly. Immature leukocytes are called lymphoblasts, or "blasts" for short. Instead of maturing and assuming their role defending us against infection, the leukemic blasts remain immature and keep multiplying.

Eventually, the oversupply of blasts interferes with the production of normal red blood cells (carry oxygen), platelets (stop bleeding), and/or neutrophils (a specific type of white blood cell that fight bacteria). It was a drop in neutrophils that sounded the first alarm in my case, the presence of a few blasts in my blood that caused the doctors to move more quickly than they originally planned, and the high percentage of blasts in my marrow that confirmed the diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia.

The bone marrow biopsy that I had last Wednesday was to see, on a preliminary basis, whether the chemotherapy had the desired effect. First, we want to see that most of the cells in the marrow have been killed. Second, we want the percentage of blasts in the remaining cells to be quite low. Some of remaining blasts might be leukemic cells still dying, or healthy blasts just being born -- I don't think you ever have no blasts.

And the results are in -- It's just a preliminary reading, but they're as good as they can be.

Or, to put it another way, they're as good as they can be!

We'll be checking again after my marrow has had a chance to recover, but for now there's no reason to think I'm not on the right track.