Dear friends, We have not updated this page in a long time. Things had been going very well for me after my sibling-matched transplant last year. I had developed some minor graft vs host disease, but that had been very successfully treated with a small amount of steroids. I had returned to work as a part time cardiology attending at Boston Medical Center. All in all, things seemed to be back on track. I am writing now to share some difficult news. We learned on Friday that a biopsy I had done recently of a rather nondescript skin lesion revealed leukemia cells. As you can imagine, we are all devastated and are still trying to come to terms with what this means. The next order of business is to establish the true extent of disease. This will be done with a PET/CT scan on Wednesday followed by a bone marrow biopsy to determine whether I have relapsed in the bone marrow or if the relapse is limited to the skin, at least ostensibly. Subsequent therapy will depend on the extent of disease. One treatment option may involve a second bone marrow transplant, this time from a different donor. As you all know, finding matches in the bone marrow registry is particularly difficult for people of non-Caucasian descent. We will be in touch shortly with some ideas about bone marrow registration drives that we are planning. In the meantime, Id like to urge all of you to register with the Be The Match registry, if you havent already done so. The chance that any one person will match with me is very slim, but there are a lot of patients who are eagerly and desperately searching for donors and you may be able to save a life. Despite the setback that I have had, bone marrow transplants remain life saving for some blood cancers. Mostly, I am writing to update you all and to ask that you keep me and my family in your thoughts and prayers as we, once again, find ourselves in the midst of a very difficult situation. Much love. Omar.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 04:10:01 +0000
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