From: "Dr. D. Kossove" <doctordee@telkomsa.net>
To: "lmS List"
Subject: myelodysplasia
Date: Saturday, January 17, 2004 2:24 AM

Suzanne, what happens is called myelodysplasia.
It can transform into leukemia.

Please do a search on the website
www.leiomyosarcoma.info  and read about it
OR search the archives of the LMS list.

If you have myelodysplasia, you are NOT given any further chemotherapy or radiation.

And they do not do bone marrow transplants for myelodysplasia in stage IV LMS patients.

go to this site
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
and type in

myelodysplasia AND sarcoma
and see what you get.
To get the abstracts, click on the blue title, or use the toolbar.

The number of chemotherapy and radiation treatments your body can tolerate is limited by what your bone marrow will tolerate.  It is a good idea to choose your treatments wisely.  Adjuvant chemotherapy for ULMS gives no proven benefit, and does diminish bone marrow.  

And you do not have to have years of chemotherapy to have bone marrow problems.  Tammy, after her AIM, had persistently lowered white cell counts and recurrent infection.  [this was the only chemo she had had.]   Ed's wife, after DMAP, had significant myelodysplasia.  [this was the only chemo she had had]

Managing your LMS wisely is as much avoiding unnecessary or ineffectual or extremely damaging treatments as choosing the right ones.

hope this warns,
doreen
Together we are more, and more effective, than we are separately.

All correspondence is my personal opinion.  I am not an oncologist.  I am not practicing medicine online.  Provision of information is for investigation and discussion with your doctors.


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