HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. The Maddens are feasting in Door County and are having a great holiday. Chris is doing really well and is happy to be able to get out of town for a while, which we are all particularly thankful for. He and Annie are spoiling Lucas and Uncle "KiKi" has edged out Auntie "Mima" as Lucas's fave playmate/minion.

Chris has a check up on Nov 30 and will find out the schedule for his fourth and final (yeah!!) consolidation chemo. We are thinking that, hopefully, it will begin after Xmas. This means that Chris will likely be "done" with treatment and recovery from treatment by the end of January/beginning of February.

The consolidation chemo that Chris is doing is the standard, most effective therapy for AML patients who do not have to go immediately to transplant. When people finish con. chemo, the hope is that it has "cured" the AML and the person will remain in remission. Once a person hits the 3 year mark of remission, that is a really good indicator that the AML will never return. There are many people out there who are in remission many years out. There are also many people out there who must move to transplant because their AML relapses. This is part of the reason we are interested in looking at clinical trials that might improve the chances of remission "sticking." Right now "maintenance" therapy is not really a standard part of AML treatmet, but research is moving in that direction. So, there are not a lot of trials geared toward Chris's situation, but there are some, and I think there will be a lot more in the near future.

Right now we have narrowed the trials to one at MD Anderson in Texas and one in Cleveland. Chris is not positive he wants to do either of these, but he is considering them. Frequency of travel for the trial is a big consideration for him as he's starting to consider when he can return to work and get back to a schedule that is closer to what he's used to.

So that's the update. Take care and good wishes for happy, healthy holidays.

YM

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Counts and Clinical Trials...

Hi all,

Chris is riding out his neutropenic stage (the time after chemo where his white counts/platelets drop very low), and it looks like he might be on the upswing as of today. We're hoping his counts will be back up by the end of the weekend. He has to take it pretty easy while he's neutropenic since he's far more susceptible to infections. So, we've duct taped him to a couch to keep him from messing around the house too much. Kidding. But, Margaret, Lucas, and I are in Des Moines visiting Craig and Rosco while Chris's counts come back.

Annie and I have been busy looking at different clinical trials out there for people with Chris's treatment plan. We've found 3 interesting trials that are meant to help keep patients who have done chemo (instead of transplant) in remission, so this is something we're looking into. Hopefully one of these trials might be something Chris can do.

Hope you all are well.

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