Let's hope I can keep up with this...

Hi everyone. With everything that's going on now with Leo's condition and upcoming transplant, I thought it would be a good idea for me to start a blog of what is happening. I think this will prove especially helpful when he is in the hospital in isolation and likely will not be able to take visitors. We will be able to keep you all posted on his status and you will all be able to leave him comments and to let him know that you're thinking of him. So I think for my first post, it will be helpful to give you all the story to date:

So back in late 2007, he started feeling extra tired and there was a pain in his side that began to be unbearable. The pain became so bad that he decided to see his doctor, who told him that his blood tests were coming back very unusual and that he should see an oncologist. Leo was officially diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) in December 2007 and was put on an oral chemo medication, Gleevec, that worked well to bring his blood levels back to normal. The medication worked well for almost a year, until around October 2008. His doctor started to see blast cells in his blood tests, which were an indication that his CML has advanced to the blast phase. At this point, they referred him to a specialist at University of Chicago. Since then, Leo's condition has been up and down, depending on the levels of platelets and red and white blood cells in his system. He has been much more tired and for those of you that know how his appetite used to be, it's certainly not the same now. As of late, he has been getting multiple platelet and blood transfusions per week and his doctor has told us that he needs to have a bone marrow transplant ASAP. Despite all my efforts and the efforts of our friends and family over the holiday season (we have recruited almost 500 donors to the National Marrow Donor Program) to encourage more people to become registered donors, Leo hasn't found a match. His brother is not a match either. His dad is a half match, so Leo's doctors have decided that they can use his dad as a stem cell donor for a procedure called a haplo transplant. In this procedure, they use his dad's stem cells, along with donated cord blood and attempt a transplant. We have already been informed about the riskiness of this procedure but have also been told that given Leo's current condition, we don't have much of a choice. His frequent platelet count drops have put him at the risk of cerebral hemorraging, which is not a risk we want to take. HE was origianlly scheduled to be admitted to UofC next week to begin his radiotherapy in preparation for the transplant, but we have run into some complications with Leo's dad's condition and further testing needs to be done to ensure that the procedure will not put his dad at too much risk. We still anticipate the transplant to come in the next few weeks, but as this news changes, I will let you all know. Leo's hospital stay, if all goes well, will be about a month, followed by several months of recovery at home. When in the hospital, he will be in isolation, so he may not be able to take guests, food gifts, flowers, plants, etc. I'm already reading all your minds, so I want to make sure that you are all aware of this limitation. So that brings us to today...

We spent all day today at U of C, so Leo could have all his pretansplant tests and we met with the radiologist that will coordinate his chemotherapy in the coming weeks. We don't have results yet for anything, but hopefully all will come back positive so we can move forward with the procedure.

I think that's about it for now. I will post updates here as they are available. Hope you find this information helpful. Take care!