68

We met with the transplant coordinator this afternoon. Out of a pool of over ten million possible donors, it looks like there are sixty eight possible matches. These represent people who have six out of an initial six genetic markers. Now the real work starts. Our coordinator will be doing additional resaearch to find how many of these sixty eight people have four other markers in common with Alex. Once they find those that are a perfect match to all ten markers, then they will weed down, using further criteria, until they have one or two good matches.

68 out of over 10,000,000 - the number is astonishing!

There are also two possible cord blood donations that are an initial six out of six match. Those will be researched, and evaluated too. The data suggests that there isn't a huge difference in survival rates between cord blood vs. marrow. So, the bottom line will be, which donation is the closest, best match for Alex.

That research will take some time. In the meantime, Alex's fever has returned. Today he had his lumbar puncture, a unit of platelets, Methotrexate, Vincristine, and Daunorubicine. He has been sleeping much of the day. We aren't sure when we will be coming home. He has to be fever free, with clear blood cultures for 48 hours, and his counts need to trend up. With his most recent temperature at 100.9, our clock for 48 hours hasn't even started yet.

The chemo is working against us going home, in that it is supressing his blood counts, so we wait and see, and wait and see...