@twitt1949 Glad to hear you're out of the hospital and your ticker is back to a regular rhythm. Do you need to be on Eliquis or any blood thinners for your A-fib?

Well, the bigger news is the AML diagnosis. The presence of blasts changed the diagnosis. Blasts are immature blood cells that normally are not seen in the peripheral blood. Meaning they don’t show up on labs. They are generally located only in the bone marrow where they mature into productive blood cells. With AML, these blast cells are able to proliferate out of control and eventually there are so many inside the marrow that they spill out into the blood stream. If not controlled, they eventually crowd out all the healthy cells. And obviously that is not a good thing.

So your doctor will be starting treatment which will destroy the rapidly dividing cancer cells. That will help reduce the current blast cell %. Repeated doses will then help to keep that population down. In my own experience at the time of my diagnosis, my blasts were at 85%. That means 85% of my blood was cancer cells and only 15% blood cells. My hemoglobin was 4.7. I’m sharing that detail to let you know this can be treatable. ☺️

Do you know if there were genetic tests run to see what mutations are involved in your diagnosis?