Today, during a visit with my doctor to discuss Phase Two of my treatment, my doctor threw me (as well as my wife and daughter who were with me for the visit) for a serious loop. He started off immediately by explaining that after further analysis of all of my tests, I now have, and always have had, Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) in Bilineal Blast Crisis instead of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), which I was my original diagnosis. I am still stuck with the Philadelphia Chromosome abnormality. That has not gone any where.
Nothing changes though, as far as my treatment goes. I will continue to take the drugs that I have been taking for Phase One of my treatment (I still need to list those on my Treatment page), and beginning Wednesday, January 13, 2010, I will begin taking about four more additional chemotherapy drugs to bring my counts back down. After my counts are brought back down again I will have another bone marrow biopsy. Oh yeah, I must not forget the fun of another four lumbar pulls (AKA, spinal taps) during the upcoming phase. Fun, indeed. Better yet, it’s a Blast Crisis!
So, in the end, nothing really changes but the name. There are consequences for the impact on my disability claims, though. I have already completed the paperwork and identified my disease as ALL. I guess there will be some backtracking to do there.