Report Card

Day 34: It's report card season but grades weren't ready when we had our appointment today.  We learned her blood counts are still progressing well but they didn't have the engraftment results from the biopsy.  They did however have information about cellularity.  Back in April when she had her last bone marrow biopsy her bone marrow had 15% cellularity.  That means it was 15% full of stem cells making blood cells and 85% empty, thus why it's called aplastic anemia (empty of blood).  Her biopsy from last Thursday revealed that she now has 80% cellularity.  That was excellent news for this point in the process.  What remained to be known was what % of those cells were her donor's DNA and what % her old, flawed DNA.  We were told we'd hear by Wednesday.  Late afternoon, however, we received an email of her engraftment report and it showed that her bone marrow is now 99.66% her donor's DNA and 0.34% her DNA.  This too was excellent news for day 34 and the expectation is that it will eventually go to 100%.

Since the news came after today's appointment we'll have to wait until Thursday's appointment to better understand how this impacts things from here.  We still have issues to deal with and she was put back on her IV pole for nights today as her kidney numbers went up again.  So there are still hurdles to cross but the engraftment report was the biggest and now we just want to be careful to not mess things up and we're grateful for all the hard work, prayers, help and good luck so far.  We'll report after Thursday afternoon's appointment but it's definitely a cause for celebration in the mean time.