I had a follow up with Dr. Burger and his team at MD Anderson. All was good! My red blood cell counts (Hbg, Hct) have dropped more than he’s comfortable with, but it’s to be expected on this medication. He wants me to go from 4 pills of Venetoclax a day to 3 pills a day. I will bloodwork done in Memphis in the winter and come back to see Houston in April. He wants to run a MRD status (minimal residual disease) then which will tell how much disease is in my bone marrow (without a bone marrow biopsy 🙌🏼)… at my last appointment he mentioned I could maybe get off of the meds completely in a year, but now he’s saying we can discuss it after 2 years. This medicine only has data for 3-4 years—and all trials have people coming off no earlier than 2 years. Unlike Imbruvica or Calquence, my previous two meds, which have 11 years of data (and they still have a lot to learn about those)… He did say since I tend to have more aggressive disease😑, he would project I would maybe only get 2 years or so off all meds. But that’s better than nothing. And who knows what else is coming down the pipeline.
That’s it! Thank you for your continued support and love.
