Hello again. I intoduced myself in another thread, but I thought I would start a new discussion thread to tell you more about my story. My 27 year old son-in-law (Jay) was diagnosed with AML and FLT3 late April 2012. You can imagine our shock when we heard this news. He and my daughter have been married about 4 1/2 years, but have no children. They are both so young and it is so hard to understand this, but I do know that this cancer can strike anyone at any age. Jay's youth is a benefit in this battle and that is a good thing. Jay did acheive remission after his first induction of chemo and because of his FLT3 he was very quickly scheduled for a BMT. His brother, and only sibling, was a full match and we were so relieved. Jay basically sailed through the transplant Aug, 2012 with very little problem other than a few mouth sores. Unfortunately, the cancer came back in early December. His transplant doctor and his oncologist have "theorized" that his brother was too close of a match. Jay never did have any HVGD, nor was the transplant different enough to fight off new luekemia cells. Strangely, Jay's blood type did completely change over to his brother's type, so I guess parts of the transplant "took". Much of this is too far over my head to understand how it all works. The transplant doctor said that a second transplant could be attempted with an unrelated matched donor with hopefully better results, but Jay would obviously need to be in remission.

Jay was admitted back into the hospital to begin chemo again. This time he was also given Sorafenib (FLT3 inhibitor). It seemed to take a long time for Jay to reach remission, but he finally did in mid February. Another miracle happened when we found there was a full match donor in the National Registry. Clearly our prayer warriors had been hard at work and we felt enormous relief. By the way, we have been able to encourage many, many new friends and family to register for the National Bone Marrow Registry over the last few months. I hope some of them will indeed be able to save lives in the future. Maybe even someone reading this post!

A few days after being released from the hospital, Jay went to meet with the transplant doctor. At that time he felt that Jay was not yet strong enought to undergo the transplant and that it was too dangerous to try at that point. He also felt that the Sorafenib (and some of the side effects) were contributing to Jay's inability to recover so he took him off the drug. A week later, Jay was much better but now the donor was sick and so the transplant was put off for another 10 days. At the end of that delay, Jay devoloped a mild case of shingles and some type of lung bug. A round of antibiotics and a week later, the worst of all news. Blast cells detected and the cancer is back. It sounds strange to say this, but other than that, Jay is now looking and feeling better than he has in a year. Crazy, right?

Today we all met with the oncologist to determine the new plan. By the way, this is all happening at Duke Medical Center and we all love the oncologist that Jay is seeing. She is very aggressive and we think working every angle to fight this disease. It seems that Jay will be re-admitted to the hospital for chemo and this time the doctor is going to try AC220 along with the chemo. Hopefully this will surpress the FLT3 but without the same side effects. We know that it may take even longer to achieve remission, but we have faith.

That's the story in brief form. I will be glad to answer any questions that anyone has about what has happened. I agree that by sharing stories we can hopefully help each other and we can learn. Thank you all for sharing your stories as well. I have been so encouraged by what I read here.