For all of you on this roller coaster ride with us, hold on.... yesterday our very wise Hematology team decided to put the HSCT on hold for a couple of months. Mac's platelets have decided to kick in, slowly, and the baby red blood cells (reticulocytes) are showing a tiny improvement. His ANC has remained in the low range of normal lately. There are some genetic tests they want to run and the results take a month to get back. There is some ambiguity in what those results might show, but it may or may not make a transplant a necessity. (Even if the results are negative, a transplant may become necessary anyway if his counts trend downward again. Did I confuse you?) It's all relatively new stuff, but FYI, telomere length is the buzzword of 2010. (You can say you heard it here and work it into your casual conversations if you want to be in the know. Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes, kind of like aglets are the ends of shoe laces.) Anyway, we're back to waiting and hoping we see an upward trend in the next 6 to 8 weeks. Although I've been accused of being a pessimist, or as I prefer to call myself a realist, I told them to keep our room on the transplant floor reserved for April. We'll see if we get there. Hopefully not. They really want to give this treatment plan a little longer, and rule out genetic issues.

So there you have it. The double loop for the day. Let's pray that Mac's bone marrow rebounds in the next few weeks and the genetic/chromosome tests come back negative! As always, thanks for checking in, praying for us, and thinking of us. Who Dat!!