Brian is Fighting for his Life against Leukemia!
Monday, May 15, 2023
Hello my dear float family,
I have some news for you all. The past year plus has been quite an adventure! Here’s a basic timeline:
Timeline as of May 15th. (Click for GoFundMe page).
As you can see for the first 11 months or so it was a challenging journey due to side effect issues. But, we were starting to pick out actual days to start back to work in early May.
Then, I started having some problems. Daily fevers, loss of energy and stamina, and a variety of other small things. April 13th I was reaching out to the oncology team wondering if I should come in. Through a relay system Dr. Li said to wait for my Wednesday (4/19) appointment. By coincidence I had an outpatient colonoscopy on the 18th and kept it.
Our new sticker (click for GoFundMe Page.
When I arrived for my appointment they took blood tests, this is normal. When Dr. Li came in the room she looked sheet white. She asked if I thought I should be in the hospital, I said “I don’t think so…???). Let’s look at your counts. White blood cells had gone crazy; from 5.8 to 76.2 in 9 days!. She said “you do need to be in the hospital, but lets see if we can do a direct admit.
So, we admitted me that afternoon and away I went back to the 7th floor! The blood test indicated my CML had mutated into AML, a very bad piece of news. It means infused chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant are in my future. However, the final results would come with the bone marrow biopsy results which take about a week… There were a lot of visits and tests and we would start the 7-3 chemotherapy process inpatient, and see how results present when they come back. However, I was bleeding in my colon which meant colonoscopy #2. Any scalpel was very bad news so another colonoscopy was much better!
After the second the bleeding actually increased, so off we go to a third! Many videos from that night are on YouTube (tinyurl.com/Brian-leukemia). There were may twists and turns since then, and the THIRD COLONOSCOPY.
The results of the Bone Marrow Biopsy came back early the next week (Tuesday 4/25 or so) with a miracle! I still have CML, I have super duper CML that must be treated like AML (still chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant) but I get a full life expectancy out the back side!
Since then I had a bad stretch of chemotherapy side effects from About May 4th to May 8th. But I did okay with them. Overall, I feel like I kept up the good side of the fight!
I will be going home in the next 5-7 days or so!
If you are able please go to our GoFundMe page at https://tinyurl.com/BDK-CML
Thank You, Brian
Our new header… (click for GoFundMe page).