Another big wait begins

Thanks everybody for the comments and phone calls! And congrats Ginny for going braceless!

Vlad indeed had his marrow biopsy today. And despite my calling him every hour before the appointment to assess whether he needed a chaperone, he went on his own. His white cells are 5.o, his hemoglobin is 13 and his platelets are 5,000. (Correction: Actually platelets are 500). Pretty close to normal if not normal. Conlon said the fact his mouth has healed so quickly is a sign his blood is rebounding quickly.

What we don't know yet is the number of leukemia cells that are still in his blood. That number will determine whether he's in remission post-chemo and will go directly to consolidation therapy, kind of the last stop on his AML chemotherapy train. If the leukemia cells' numbers are too high, he'll go through the induction therapy a second time. Then he would presumably go to the consolidation therapy after that.

This explains things better:

The first round of chemotherapy usually does not get rid of all the AML cells. Most patients will need more treatment. Usually the same drugs are used for more rounds of treatment to complete induction therapy.

More treatment is usually needed even after a patient with AML is in remission. This second part of treatment is called consolidation therapy. It is needed because some AML cells remain that are not found by common blood or marrow tests. Consolidation therapy is also done in the hospital. As with induction therarpy, patients may be in the hospital for three to four weeks, or sometimes longer. Consolidation therapy may include chemotherapy with or without an allogeneic stem cell transplant or autologous stem cell transplant.

He goes back Monday and should get the test results then. This will be a very big milestone.