My Good Luck Charm Comes Through Again

Today I had my regular Monday clinic visit with my doctor. After my last one, two weeks ago, I went straight from the clinic into the hospital to deal with my bladder infection. Since I was in the hospital last Monday, I didn't have a clinic appointment.

I went with my mom, who has been my Chicago caregiver for a week and will be here one more week. Over the course of dealing with this disease, now exceeding one year, my mom has been my good luck charm. When she is visiting, things go well. Maybe it's the cooking.

My doctor came in, smiling and remarking at how much better I looked than I had looked two weeks ago. She told us my blood counts were looking very good and showed us the printout she was carrying: white blood cells at 4.0 (normal), platelets at 71 (low, but enough of an increase to signify improvement instead of noise), hemoglobin roughly the same as last time. All encouraging, but what really matters is the biopsy results.

Then, and this felt like an afterthought, she reached into the pocket of her white lab coat and said, "Oh. I have more good news." She had the results of two tests carried out on my Day 30 bone marrow biopsy — the XX/XY breakdown (because my donor is female, this is a useful measurement of the), and the count of cells carrying deletion 7, a chromosomal abnormality that marks my leukemia cells.

The XX/XY breakdown is 100% / 0%, which is actually a teeny bit better than the corresponding result after my first transplant (99+% / <1%). I am woman, hear me roar!

The deletion 7 test found claims it found a few cells (3 out of 400),  but this is considered a negative (good) result. The test typically has a little noise, and anything under 8 out of 400 is treated as equivalent to zero. My doctor hypothesizes that the testing process itself generates a few deletion 7 false positives. Another way of thinking about it is that my deletion 7 test results are indistinguishable from those of someone with no leukemia.

So, great news! On the other hand, across my celebratory mood lies the shadow of knowing I have received the best possible news before, after my Day 30 biopsy following my first transplant, and it wasn't good enough. On the other, other hand, I can't do any better than I'm doing, so I might as well celebrate — I had sparkling grape juice with dinner.