Author: Aaron

血液を出して、血液を入れる Tonight is the last infusion. Makoto seems good but very tired. She is often nauseous, but the nursing staff is very attentive and has been good about offsetting most of her issues with medication and other support so she is still eating well. Interestingly, she has returned to some of her pregnancy cravings of…

翻訳は下にあります。 With breast cancer chemotherapy regimens typically a large dose of chemo is given in a single setting, and then you leave for a week or two to recover. You need that time to recover. Leukemia laughs at this regimen. The basic regimen for standard Leukemia is 3 days of one chemo, every single day,…

翻訳は下にあります。 Again I will start with facts as we have them right now. As soon as the doctors started looking at Makoto’s leukemia they were trying to understand it’s mutations. The mutations that lead to the cancer determine how treatable it is, and how specifically it should be treated. Because Makoto was generally pretty healthy…

翻訳は下にあります。 Thankfully more good than bad so far but I will put the facts up top here and explain more down below. Makoto has been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Here are some facts: Some things to know about AML: A little over a month ago, while walking daily up the very steep hill where…

Let me put the important stuff first so it’s not like one of those recipe blogs where they tell you their life story before the recipe. We didn’t get a pCR, but it was close. Six lymph nodes were removed, they were clear of disease, and didn’t show any sign of previous disease. All the…

The surgery was a complete success. Everything went according to plan. Dr. Oncology Surgeon said that while we won’t know for sure until the pathology report in a week or so, she examined and performed an x-ray on the sample from where the titanium clip was and it looked, ‘good’. That’s as good as we…

We got the results of Makoto’s pre-surgical MRI last week. They show no mass remaining, but some material around the “clip” which was a small titanium shard that was placed at the site of the original biopsy to mark the location of the original tumor for removal. This material surrounding the clip is either 1)…

Last Wednesday was the final infusion. So far the recovery has not been too bad. The standard stuff that Makoto is used to now, all fairly easy to control with meds and rest. The last examination was generally the same, a very tiny nodule that is barely there remains, but Dr. Oncologist thinks it may…

Dr. Oncologist, upon examination two weeks seemed actually surprised and said, “Wow! It’s very soft and flat. I feel like it is starting to break apart. The AC is definitely working.” This was honestly the first time either of us recall her being surprised. Today, two weeks later at the exam, she said that the…

That’s what they call it anyway. Doxorubicin also known as Adriamycin which is the “A” in AC. Makoto’s first dose was this last Tuesday, and I think we all collectively held our breath to see what the effect would be. So far, it does not seem to be awful, but it is having a much…