BMA

Tomorrow around 830 Mikayla will have her bone marrow aspirate (BMA). This test will determine if Leukemia is still present in her bone marrow. The results hopefully will be in no later than Friday night. If the Leukemia is spotted then we will begin chemo straight away. If not we will begin to consider taking the dreaded break from the hospital. The test requires that they do a spinal tap at the same time to look for Leukemia in her central nervous system. During the exam they will inject the chemo drug Ari-C in her spinal fluid to help with killing the hard to find cells that may or may not be hiding there. If Leukemia is found it is not considered a relapse, but rather that the induction phase of chemo was not successful. They will no matter what continue to the consolidation phase. If at the end of consolidation Leukemia is found then we change tracks and start using experimental drugs not commonly used in Leukemia, but have showed glimmers of hope in the fight against it. She will be somewhat of a lab rat in the experiment to futher understand if the drugs are a benefit or not.