GVHD, LIVER COUNTS, AND LYMPHOCYTE INFUSIONS

Abbi's Mom: Hello everyone, it has been a while and a lot has happened, Abbi was released from the hospital march 30th and had her bone marrow biopsy April 3rd which showed her leukemia cells to still be at 1% and her engraftment (percentage of donor cells vs Abbi cells) to be at 99% donor in all cell lines except one which was 66% donor (they check 4 different cell lines) so at that point they were saying the second stem cell boost did not work. well that same day we found that out, the docs prepared to give her a very large lymphocyte infusion called a DLI, (mature white blood cells from her donor that have the ability to find and destroy all foreign matter including leukemia cells) that was on April 10th, we waited 2 and a half weeks and on April 26th they did another biopsy and on may 1st we got the miraculous news that there were no detectable leukemia cells left in her body! they said we don't know how but it is 0. then may 3rd, my sons 8th b day, we got more great news Abbi had converted to 100% donor in all cell lines but the one, where she jumped from 66% to 99%! in 2 weeks! the doctor told us that in the beginning of her being diagnosed with AML none of them thought this could be achievable, it was a 10% chance. Wow did she show them. remember when i said they were trying to give her graft vs host disease, well her liver numbers started to climb around the same time as the engraftment jumped to 100%, and the most common places for the donor cells to attack are the skin liver and gut, well in this situation they are attacking her liver and therefore attacking all foreign cells, leukemia cells! Her liver numbers continue to climb, so instead of treating it with steroids which suppress the immune system and possibly lose the graft vs leukemia effect they have given her a medicine called actigall to protect her liver from damage. they want to let it go as long as they can before treating it. so we have reached our goal thanks to god and the doctors and nurses at UCSF! Now the last thing is for this gvhd to be chronic and last i guess a lifetime or at least long enough for the leukemia cells to never come back, that is our next prayer, for the gvhd to stick around without hurting her, cause right now this is the perfect place they say to have the gvhd because the liver heals itself. So far there are no other places where it is effecting her, but that could change over time, thank you everyone for the many prayers!