chemo

My chemo starts today.  My treatment is called Flag-Ida. It consists of 5 days of chemo. The drugs I will be getting are Idarubucin, Fludarabine, and Cytarabine. I will be getting the Idarubucin for3 day and the others for 5 days. After the chemo I will get a shot of Subcut Filgrastim (GCSF).  Tasty  stuff!

After the induction chemo I will leave hospital when my neutrophil count is above 500.  I will also get two courses of consolidation chemo which will be done as an outpatient. The consolidation chemo uses the same drugs except over a shorter duration.

All of this should, all going  well, take 3 months

After the three months I will probably be getting a stem cell transplant. Luckily for me I have three potential donors, my sister and two unrelated people. My sister is a 7/8 match which is OK except she has also had children.  Apparently this means it is unlikely she will be the donor. Instead one of the other two matches will be used.  I believe both of them are an 8/8 match. One of them is also male which apparently is preferred over females for some reason.