Insurance is not what is should be...

The news of the week is that Natasha's stem cells are not suitable for transplanting to Kay. So the insurance policy that we took out at Natasha's birth hasn't worked out. I'm pretty disappointed about that, it would have been rather uplifting if it had worked out. However the search has begun to find a 3rd party donor. This is potentially a lengthy process. An initial search based on a restricted set of criteria will be made in the global donor database. Matching donors will be requested for a blood sample which will then be subjected to a finer set of compatibility tests at Nijmegen. If a donor is then selected they will then be contacted to see if they are prepared to provide bone marrow. This whole process can be vary in length depending on the number of donors found and the difficulty of finding a suitable match. We have been told that a donor will always be found, but of course the most important thing is that it is a GOOD donor. No one is saying anything about the chance of a good donor being found, probably because they don't yet know.

It is unlikely that a donor will be found before week 14 (we're now in week 11) so in the best case Kay will be put on maintenance chemotherapy until a donor is found. However, if at the next test in a few weeks she is still over the MRD she will under go a further round of intense chemo to achieve the lowest cancer cell count possible before undergoing a transplant. Essentially this all means that we will be living in fairly uncertain circumstances for some weeks to come, hoping that a suitable donor will be found soon.

Kay has come through the last few days of chemo well enough. The asparaginese treatment was completed today with only (relatively) minor upset, I gather from Marion. However the disappointment is that Kay's red cell count was very low, so Kay & Marion have had to stay an extra night in Njmegen while Kay is given some blood. We hope that they will be home early tomorrow. Both are upset by the delay.

The next cycle begins on 7th January, in theory. We should also hear about progress with the donor search at that time. So for the time being we have to hope that Kay stays well and that she doesn't have a cell type that is difficult to match. I guess that The System deliberately doesn't expose us to such details, to minimize emotional rollercoaster effects.

Let's hope that we get a quiet New Year.