I Met the LIME lead Dr. Petersdorf

Dr. Petersdorf, an adorable middle-aged Chinese woman with hip glasses sliding off of her nose, softly yet competently explained the situation to me yesterday.

Straight up:  They don't know what's causing the dysfunction of my bone marrow.  

What they do know:  

1.  I have a common tissue type so if a bone marrow transplant is ultimately decided as my fate, there will likely be a donor somewhere in the world.   They also know that non-donor matches have a 50% or less percentage of working.    Had my brother been a match, I would have had a 70% chance of success.

2.  Some of the labwork finally came back.   They only had 3 bone marrow cells to analyze (which is not enough to diagnosis conclusively).   The chromosomes in all three cells appeared normal--an indication of Aplastic Anemia.    If the chromosomes were abnormal, then it might indicate Leukemia or something else like that.

3.  They are going to call in all the specialists:  the chromosome people, the cancer people, the infectious disease teams, the hemo doctors.   I, apparently, am going to be a Fred Hutchinson multi-team project.
We will most likely not have a diagnosis or treatment plan for up to three weeks.

What they want to know:

What Ayurvedic pills I took in India.   We called and texted my Ayurvedic Doctor in India this morning requesting samples as well as the names of both the pills and herbs he prescribed.    Because his English is not so great, we called and emailed my former landlord, Neena Shahani, who speaks fabulous English, to ask her to ensure that he understood our request and the importance of receiving this package as soon as possible.  

Today:

I have a bone marrow aspiration at 3pm.   We are starting over from scratch.  We are praying that there's more cells in the marrow than the last time.