What’s coming up

February 26th, Linda will be taking a high dosage of chemotherapy for the purpose of preparing her for the collection of her stem cells. This high dosage will result in her white blood cell count decreasing quickly and significantly and in her needing to stay home.

About 10 days later she will go into UW to have the stem cells collected.  This would be an outpatient procedure.

The next step will involve about a 3 week hospital stay.  The doctors have tentatively planned Linda’s hospital stay for about 4-5 weeks from the initial chemo treatment on February 26th.  Linda’s sister is planning on coming and staying with us during this entire time.  For those of you who may be worried about our kids lunches and clean clothes, we’ll be taken care of.  You don’t need to worry 🙂  We are going to talk to her about the church potentially helping us with meals at that time.

The hospital stay includes an additional high dosage chemo treatment followed by the replacing of her stem cells.  The intention is to have the stem cells return to the bone marrow and repopulate the blood with the healthy cells.

Following her time in the hospital, Linda will most likely be placed on a maintenance plan involving weekly appointments, maintenance therapy, and limited public interaction (okay, she may go out at times but with a mask and we’re thinking to just avoid that :).

Her Blood Results

• Most of her blood counts were normal.
• The total protein was normal.
• One of the disease markers should be 0 and it has come down from 3.4 to 0.5.
• In October Linda had anemia due to the cancer cells crowding out the red blood cells.  That has completely resolved!