Friday, February 6, 2009

Good news lymphoma re-check

Will had his quarterly re-check for lymphoma yesterday. The word is. . .he looks good. No evidence of recurrence and the blood work looked good, even his chronic anemia was some better and his kidney function was better than it has been in months. (Will suspects this is related to him being on a lower tacrolimis does, something that likely will chance this week; but, still. . .it's good to know the kidneys can bounce back when given the chance!)

So, now Will will be down to 1 chest CT a year (he'll have it in March), and semi-annual re-checks instead of quarterly. He's 3 years in remission from the transplant-related Hodgkin's lymphoma in June and 5 or 6 years remission from the regular PTLD in, I think, this fall.

The docs have now decided what we suspected all along: Will's lymphomas occurred simultaneously. The regular PTLD is so much more fast moving and easier to diagnose, it was noticed and treated first. The transplant-related Hodgkin's kept cruising along (it doesn't respond to Ritixumab, apparently) and was finally diagnosed and treated 2 years after the regular PTLD. They figure this because of the odds of the whole thing. Apparently the odds that someone would get regular PTLD and then, 2 years later, a separate occurrence of Hodgkin's lymphoma are something like 1 in a billion or so, whereas the odds that someone would get regular PTLD and that would mutate into transplant-related Hodgkin's are more like 1 in 100,000.

Will continues to recover from the pneumonia. It's a long road, but he has been really, really diligent this week about getting out and doing something every day -- walking the dog, visiting Liam at school, whatever. This is incredibly helpful to him. We hope he'll be ready to be back to rowing when the days get longer this spring.

2 comments:

Tina said...

Oh I'm so happy to hear your Good News! What a relief. Glad to hear he's getting out and getting that exercise, how are you doing? Don't forget to take care of yourself in all of this. I sometimes feel super selfish when I just go for a walk alone but it's always a good thing!

Take Care and Yayyyy!

Unknown said...

Good to hear!

Will's courageous course inspires me.