We went down to the hospital Thursday to supposedly start Tony's next batch of maintenance chemo. They did a covid test and a blood draw to make sure everything was good to start. The results came back that his liver function is over 3 times what it is supposed to be. So they asked him a litany of questions trying to figure out why (including asking if he got drunk a lot on the cruise boat😂) But they couldn't come up with a distinct reason. So they decided he needed an ultrasound of his liver before he can start chemo. Initially they were going to do the test same day or next day, but then they checked the schedule and their first available appointment is on Wednesday. So right now, the plan is to do another blood test on Tuesday, then ultrasound Wednesday, and then if everything is A ok, he will start the next round of chemo on Thursday. (The doctor did say she suspected it could just be caused by the cold he has right now).
Now, on to the specific prayer request. They did an extra test while we were there on Thursday. The test is called a chimerism test. They believe there's a chance that some of Tony's original cells started to return and that is why his cancer returned. If that is the case, they can do a treatment called a donor lymphocyte infusion. They would take cells from his original bone marrow donor, and infuse them to try and kick out Tony's cells. They got test results from Tony's original bone marrow donor, and now they have tested Tony. So in 2-3 weeks they should know if this is a possibility. Donor lymphocyte infusions are far less intense than doing another bone marrow transplant, so we would really like this to be the case.
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