Getting Closer

This is not California wildfire smoke, it's the Corcovado statue in Rio peeking above the clouds. We have not been anywhere near the fires that burned this week. They are getting under control now. But as I drove home tonight over Mulholland Highway, a full moon rose over the hills, orange like a pumpkin through the distant smoke. That sounds like a sentence from a tenth grade english essay. Not that I ever completed one. Here's what I wrote earlier this week:

Tuesday, the 23rd
Not much new news. We’re sitting in a doctor’s office right now at City of Hope. Rosina is getting the dressing changed on her arm and talking to the Brazilian Nurse about the difficulties of learning medicine in another language. She had a hard time learning “Chicken Pox”. It was too bizarre.

Rosina has to do a bunch of tests that she already did, since her admitting was pushed a month. Today is Tuesday, she needs to come back on Friday for some things, and then Monday the 29th she comes to stay for a while. That is referred to as Day –10 (minus ten). Day zero, Nov 8, is the infusion of ”fresh donor marrow” (it’s organic!), delivered as a transfusion. Before that, radiation and chemo to create a clean slate for the new bone marrow. I know we all think of bone marrow as the spongy stuff inside a bone (which it is) but the transplant is really a stem cell transplant. This particular treatment for Leukemia is one of the leading treatments using stem cells. (see primer below)

The extra month that she has had at home has been nice, but the gap in her treatment has made the anticipation about getting back into it a bit greater. And this is the toughest part coming up. The support from all of you has been great, all our carpools etc. have been working well, and the never-ending help from Sonia (who turned 40 today [the 23rd]) makes it all work. I’ll have some more regular posts as we move forward and thanks for all.

xo
ph



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PS What’s the deal with stem cells you ask? Cells in your body have particular tasks – skin cells, cells around your heart, blood cells etc. Stem cells are cells that have not received an assignment yet - "undifferentiated" - which is what makes them so powerful. The potential is to be able to program them to do specific tasks, like grow new heart tissue, or repair the coating around a damaged spinal cord, treat diabetes and all kinds of things. Stem cells can also reproduce without end. It’s a pretty amazing tool. The controversy is not about stem cells themselves or the treatments, it’s because the most robust stem cells, needed for research, are produced by embryos - fertilized eggs. They are undifferentiated cells. Once you have the stem cells, they keep reproducing by themselves, and with enough stem cells, you don’t need to use more embryos. Ethical issues aside, there are legal/political inconsistencies as fertility clinics, for example, are permitted to discard thousands and thousands of embryos, but they are not available for research. Anyway before I ask you to attend a march and let you crash on my futon, Rosina’s stem cell treatment is not controversial but simply a medical miracle, difficult as it is. She will rock the house.