Hello everyone

[Guest guest]

I have been hiding in the background, reading the posts and learning

so much. Here is a bit about me. I'm a divorced mom of a 13 year

old great daughter. I work as a social worker. I graduated from

Penn State and The University of Southern California. I used to love

spicy food and margaritas but I have modified my diet to the healthy

side. I was diagnosed in March after five months of testing when my

Hem/Onc thought I had a platelet disease because they were over 600.

Then my WBC count started flying higher than the space shuttle and I

he sent me for a bone marrow aspiration. I started Gleevec at 300 mg

because my RBC count was so low. My WBC count almost dropped off the

charts but after begging him , he finally moved me up to 400mg. I've

had two Q-RT-PCR tests done. I keep reading taht people get results

in terms of log reductions or %.

Here is what my results say- I have p210 BCR-ABL transcrip but I

don't know if it is b2a2 or b3a2. I have a blurry copy but it

looks like it says- results on 5/29 were 1.1x10-3( to the third

power) and on 7/15/07 the results were 4.4x10-4. Does anyone have

any idea what it means. My Hem/ONc said it shows improvement. My

labs on 8/25 were WBC 3.9, RBC 3.29,HGB 10, RDW 17.6, Neut 58.5, ANC

2.28, platelets 332.

I have many of the lovely side effects including losing my color in

my hands, feets, lips and other hyperpigmented parts of my body- very

interesting. The bone pain is strange and the various muscle spasms

are real attention getters when I'm talking to people. Has anyone

else experienced a sensitivity to constriction? My knees socks left

a band of red around my leg with some slight bruising- ok they were

fencing kneesocks which are supposed to not fall down and are tighter

than normal but - still I got a bruise from kneesocks.

I joined Team in Training with TH LLS and will be walking a 1/2

marathon here in Orange County/ Southern California in January and

hopefully another in April in Nashville the day after my 56th b-day.

If anyone is close to either place I'd love to meet you.

Thank you- all of you- so much for posting and giving me a place to

belong. It is nice to have friends on this journey. My boyfriend

left because he couldn't stand to think about me dying- well that was

the excuse anyway. Hang in there everyone.