Re: Re: question for Judy T.

March 14, 2005

At 12:39 PM 3/14/05 +0000, Judy wrote:

> After sometime, he realised

>that what we had was special, and eventually decided to continue

>with our marriage, I tell you this because i believe that this was

>in part to blame for my relapse. I do not blame him, i blame my way

>of handling his crisis. I see a therapist now and have dealt with

>the hurt i felt, but at the time it consumed me. did this cause my

>relapse, who knows, it will not make it go away, but i do recognise

>this as a very stressful time in my life and it may have triggered

>the relapse.

Dear Judy,

I appreciate your sharing.......and hope that I did not hit a nerve in

a bad way? Your BMT did give you 10 years of good quality active

life....and if you did not have it at that time, there would not have been

many other good options....as those trying to decide on treatment

choice now face.

Why I asked about the stress issue, is because of the 'known' effect

of stress on the immune system. Of course, you had a new immune

system from your brother that should have taken care of any 'stray

cml cells'......just like a healthy immune system does for people in

the general population who can have some ph+ cells and not get CML.

So maybe it is possible to render this " new " immune system dysfunctional

by stress........just a thought.

And I do think that you mention a major concept.....it is not the stress

that you have (as Tracey mentions, every life has stress) but how you

react to the stress. I know there is research on the effect of high cortisol

levels (which is from stress) and damage it does to the body.

Thanks for sharing at such a personal and honest level.

Maui Nanc

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