HuntingNet.com Forums - Update on Cody

Well unfortunately the news today isn’t very good. Over the weekend Cody developed Graft v. Host (GVH) disease pretty badly, & the dr. is very concerned.
Right now the major symptom is a rash on his skin that feels like a bad sunburn & itches terribly. The other symptom is elevated liver function, which now isn’t very bad, but could become bad, and cause his liver & other organs to shut down. The normal treatment for this is steroids, which worked at first, but now aren’t helping.

We basically have 4 options at this time:

1. Nothing, in which case it will likely continue to get worse, his skin will blister & peel off like a burn victim, and eventually organ failure. Obviously, not being considered.
2. Mega doses of steroids which have not proven to be effective. However, they have switched him from oral to IV steroids hoping his body just isn’t absorbing the pills well, and the IVs will cure the problem. This should happen within 24-48 hours if it does.
3. Horse serum, this is where they inject human white blood cells into a horse. The horse’s immune system then produces antibodies to fight off the human cells; the antibodies are then taken from the horse & injected into the patient. This has a very high success rate against GVH, unfortunately, 80% of patients who this is used on die within the first 12 months from infection as this procedure suppresses the immune system tremendously and for an extended time. Once this is used other options are pretty much out. So this will likely be a last ditch option.
4. There is an experimental treatment that has been developed recently that sounds much more promising, although there are still some significant risks. So far it has a 100% cure rate against GVH, & 12 months out over 70% of patients are still alive. Obviously this is the one we would like to do, but it has to get special approval as it is experimental, so we’re not sure we’ll be able to do it, though the dr. is pretty sure we’ll be able to. What they do with this is similar to the horse serum, except they use mice, evidently the mice immune system isn’t as aggressive or as strong as the horse serum. After they harvest they antibodies from the mice they take it to a lab & manipulate it so that it is as close to human as possible ( don’t know how they do that). Complications are infections as it suppresses the immune system for about 4 weeks, and the risk of allowing a virus (EBV, don’t know what it stands for) that nearly all humans carry but is dormant because of our immune system (it is the virus that causes mono). However, since his immune system is suppressed the virus can become active and lead to lymphoma.

He will probably be admitted for a couple of days to give him the treatment.

So as you can see, things that were looking very good a few days ago are now not looking so good, that’s how quickly things can change with bone marrow transplant patients. We are praying for a miraculous cure from God for this. Please keep Cody in your prayers as well as the rest of us. Looks like the next few weeks will be a trying time.

Brian

One Shot....One Kill