Trey, anyone else - please help me if you can? I am very scared
My history is basically that Gleevec worked very well to begin with (still on 400mg), I had CHR at 10 days (156k wcc at dx).
I had what I would call a pretty slow start and only reached 12% IS at 10 weeks (3 mths), but this may have been testing issues as it seemed to accelerate after that (all IS):
dx = 37% (BM)
3 months = 12% (PB from here on)
6 months = 0.14%
9 months = 0.004%
12 months = 0.0039%
15 months = 0.013%
16 months = 0.03%
As some of you know, I used some herbs to help with my terrible stomach problems at around 11 months (with approval for short-term use only), and continued them until around 14 months. As you can imagine I'm horrified that this may have had a negative impact on my results, especially as this appears to be the exact point that things started going wrong and it would make it all my fault.
Trey, in your opinion and from all of the cases you have seen, does it look like I am losing my response? Is it possible that I need to "wash out" the herbs from my system still - or is that just wishful thinking?
I find it hard to believe that I would get such low results at 9 months, and then jump up a log to "flatline" so I feel the logical conclusion here is that I am steadily increasing - meaning that I likely have a mutation given the early good response. Dan - I know that you mentioned that if there is a mutation, there would be more of a spike in PCR. Can anyone verify if that is really true? Maybe it is simply down to the time of day, or what I have been eating? (I changed from morning to night at around 14 months or so).
I understand that there is a possibility of testing error between 2 points, but it is unlikely between 3 with an almost 1 log increase. I realise that I am still currently MMR, but I really feel by looking at these results, that perhaps it is only a matter of time.
I cannot have a mutation test until I lose my MMR at 0.1%, which does not feel so far away. I am also having another PCR in early December.
If anyone else has had this experience, please share what happened with you? Dan, I know you are going through something similar right now, and I really feel for you. xxx.
Please help!