AA & MDSIF

Aplastic Anemia got a little less unknown recently with the public announcement by ABC correspondent Robin Roberts that she has MDS - another bone marrow failure condition.  Research and advocacy for both conditions are supported by the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation.  We have attended several of their conferences and have been impressed by their active support of providing research grants.  Their website is http://www.aamds.org/  

Katherine's 8th grade class donated some of the money they raised over nine years to support this foundation.  This is a clip of Katherine introducing the foundation and later of Annie accepting their donation on behalf of the foundation.

Annie's results from Thursday's blood test came in Friday at plt 9, hmg 9.1, anc 530.  We had hoped to go until next week before a transfusion.  Unfortunately Annie has had trouble with bleeding in her mouth and last night it became clear she'd need a transfusion today.  She and Tom went to the ER this morning.  I am now convinced that part of the ER doctrine is to discourage anyone from going to the ER.  In our experience everything there takes ten times longer.  Thus although they went at 8:00 this morning and were immediately checked in, they are still waiting for a transfusion.  She has been admitted to the main hospital so this could be stretched into the evening.  They required her to have another CBC and her hmg has dropped to 7.1 so they'll transfuse both.

Now we know if we have any hope of getting through this intact we have to look for silver linings in everything.  So this one's is we're glad to take care of this now so Annie won't have to miss any of her week-long robotics training next week.  She has signed up to be part of the school's first robotics team and had been concerned about missing the training for transfusions next week.  Thus hopefully I won't have to write again before a week from Monday.  As always many thanks for the thoughts and prayers.