Icicyles and Snowdrifts

            The snow has stopped here in Lexington. Our acre lot is a dramatic landscape of huge icicles, peaked, windswept drifts, low-lying tree trunks deep in snow, and circular wells carved out around other trees. The red of Sam’s Ford is completely gone on three sides; the North Wind has blown away some of the snow on the garden side.

            David continues to look good. He’s got a beard worthy of a mountain man and was able to visit Manhattan last weekend.

            His counts look good: the white blood cell count has stayed below 4 for 9 days, down from 9.13. The blast percentage is 42%, not great: normal is below 5%. He had a transfusion of red blood cells Friday, but doesn’t have to return to Cox 1 until Wednesday this week.

            For an hour a day, from 28 January to 1 February, David had his third course of five decitabine infusions. We hope the low WBC counts are at least partially caused by the decitabine. (The hydroxyurea certainly accounts for at least some of the dip.)

At the end of this 28 day cycle (5 days of decitabine, 23 days off), the nurse practitioner will do yet another bone marrow biopsy, to see whether the decitabine is attacking the leukemic blasts in the bone marrow itself. The marrow is the leukemia factory; we’re hoping the decitabine is scoring direct hits there. We’ll know in about two weeks if it’s making any headway.

Date of Blood Draw (CBC)	White Blood Cell Count	% Blasts in circu-lation	Hematocrit (red blood cells)	Platelets	Absolute Neutro- phils
5-Jan-15	2.16	6.0%	25.60	39.00	0.17
8-Jan-15	1.58	4.0%	22.10	39.00	0.16
12-Jan-15	1.04	4.7%	22.40	40.00	0.12
15-Jan-15	1.40	16.0%	22.40	38.00	0.03
19-Jan-15	2.29	22.0%	23.70	29.00	0.05
23-Jan-15	3.42	23.0%	23.80	36.00	0.34
28-Jan-15	9.46	49.0%	22.90	58.00	1.51
30-Jan-15	11.80	30.8%	20.90	78.00	1.30
1-Feb-15	9.13		23.60	66.00
4-Feb-15	3.39	42.0%	23.10	39.00	0.41
13-Feb-15	3.53	pending	19.40	49.00	Pending