Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
On January 7th after a weekend of ice fishing, Darrell woke up with back/chest pain strong enough that we headed to the ER. Luckily no heart issues but the ER docs discovered that all his blood counts were extremely low. To make a long story short after a week in the hospital, tons of tests and multiple transfusions, he was diagnosed with high grade myelodysplastic syndrome with extra blasts and complex cytology. Which for folks like me, are asking "What the heck is that?" MDS is a leukemia-like blood cancer. Since diagnosis he has had 3 rounds of chemo and is currently in near remission. Unfortunately, his MDs do not believe this remission will last and the only real cure is a stem cell transplant. He has a great medical/transplant team here at UW Hospital Madison. Travis was the donor and April 24th was transplant day. It could be several weeks before they can determine if the procedure was successful. Obviously this is not the journey we expected when we retired but the goal is to be back in the RV by fall.
Again thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. I will post updates going forward.
