Hi @ewimpz I’m so sorry that this is impacting your life. Is this a diagnosis for you or a loved one? It’s an aggressive blood cancer but can have a very positive outcome with treatment. Often, when it is brought to remission, a bone marrow transplant is required to keep it from relapsing.

Mutations are identified so that the chemo can be targeted to that specific mutation. AML can be a tricky leukemia to treat because some of the cells can go into hibernation while undergoing treatment, and hide out. They can then reemerge some time later.

We get AML when at some point our immune system has stopped recognizing the cancer cells as an invader, allowing the immature blood cells, called blasts, to proliferate and overwhelm the blood, depleting the red cells. Chemo kills off these cancer cells. But there is a chance that they will emerge again, and if the mutation is still present, the immune system won’t pick it up and the process starts all over. That is why it is frequently necessary to have an entirely new immune system via stem cells so that you can stay in full remission.

There are a number of us in Connect who have had AML with varying mutations. I’m almost 3 years post AML and had a bone marrow transplant. My disease is in complete remission.
I’d like to invite @alive @edb1123 @leukskywalker and @mtoyne2021, whose daughter has AML, into the conversation so that you can speak with all of us and get a better understanding of what to expect.

Where are you in treatment? Has chemo begun yet?

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