21 replies to this topic

[SB3]

Congratulations! Your story is so inspiring. I started on 80 mg of Sprycel last week (after being on a week-long drug break due to mylosuppression from 100 mg for five weeks). So far, I'm feeling pretty good and my blood counts are holding steady (WBC rose to 4.0 from a low of 2.6 and ANC is up to 1.6). I'm seeing a new oncologist tomorrow for a second opinion and will definitely talk to him about the dosage. My current onc had wanted to drop me down to 50 mg but I was so nervous about lowering the dose that much. Now, though, after seeing your comments from Dr. Cortes, perhaps my fears were unfounded. It's so hard to know when you're newly diagnosed what the right steps are -- and it's worse when you lack confidence in your doctor (or she doesn't communicate very well). I'm hoping I'll feel a little more confident with the new onc.

[janne]

Michael,

You made a comment in your initial post on this thread that I have a question about, as follows: " But I pressed on the PCR = 0.000 and he again said that there is no zero.  It just gets lower and then becomes background to the normal population (Trey is going to love this one).  He said experimental work they are doing on PCR testing with  much higher sensitivities show many more false positives (i.e. bcr-abl transcripts present) giving them concern.  This is a topic for another thread."

Is that something you can expound on now,(in another thread)  these higher sensitivities showing more false positives...? Or, did you mean this is yet to be written up by Dr. Cortes ?

Always curious, Janne