No News Yet - Day 30

Yes, I know, the wait has been long for us too.  :)  We will for sure have the definitive results tomorrow.  After labs were taken (blood sample) at 3pm today, we met with our nurse practitioner for about an hour to examine Ellie and look over paperwork for our next phase of treatment.  Our doctor was a solid two hours late, so we finally met with him at about 5:30 and he told us the lab in Seattle was still working on the final tests for Ellie's Residual count determination (MRD) and that we would be delayed by another day.

The slight good news today was that the preliminary test they typically run prior to the MRD came back Negative.  This test ID's what is going on with the new B-cells her body is starting to produce and how their DNA is rearranging.  (Her B-cells, part of her white blood cells, are the ones that were leukemic to begin with)  In a nut shell, now that most of her body is clean, she is regenerating many blood cells.  Her rate of regeneration is higher than a normal child right now because her overall cell count was knocked so low from all the chemo treatment (i.e. good & bad guys both wiped out).  As a result, some of the overage of new cells tend to look premature, similiar to leukemia.  This is not necessarily a bad thing which is why they run this preliminary test.  Many of the new cells that do not look exactly like normal white blood cells have their DNA examined to make sure they are not leukemic.  Leukemia cells reproduce identically (exact same DNA configuration), so the test the lab runs checks for cell "cloning" (via PCR methodology for you molecular biologists).  All of the cells able to be examined by this test in Ellie's marrow came back NEGATIVE for the cloning effect.  *Small Fist Pump*  This test, however, is not able to detect down to the minute detail (so to speak) of the MRD test.  So, we wait.

The Doc will call tomorrow with the final results.  15 more hours won't hurt a bit.  We had an awesome day going out to a restaurant for breakfast for the first time since early June.  T&E, now in quite the talkative mode, were waving hi and bye to every random stranger (and garbage truck) that passed by.  Ellie's blood results today showed an immune system count of 950!!!  They tell us this will be her peak for a while, but man o man is it nice to see her feeling so good.

Thank you again for all of the prayers of support....Hope is alive for tomorrow!