Patricia LaGrange Patricia LaGrange

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. 
Patricia has been living with a rare blood cancer that was originally diagnosed 12 1/2 years ago as Polycthemia Vera. The diagnosis was recently corrected to Essential Thrombosis.  The day before Thanksgiving, Patricia shared with myself (her daughter, Heather) and her husband, Dave that her oncologist shared that based on some of her recent symptoms which include an enlarged spleen, low iron and suspected bleeding cappilaries in her stomach, that her cancer had progressed to another stage called Myelofibrosis which is a bone marrow cancer. Throughout the past 12 years, she has gone through several treatments at the recommendation of her oncologist, including phlebotomy, multiple medications, blood transfusions and iron transfusions. 
The day after Christmas, she underwent a bone marrow biopsy (her 3rd since her original diagnosis) to check on the scarring of her bone marrow and to give an updated diagnosis of her cancer. 
Unfortunately, she was one of the less than 1% that had a complication. The Dr had knicked a blood vessel during the surgery and hours later it was confirmed that she had a foot long hematoma that was actively bleeding, as well as a second hematoma that was smaller. She was transferred to North Memorial hospital and spent the first few days in the ICU and the next few days in a regular room. Her care was very good but very tricky. She's home now but is still battling symptoms like nausea, extreme fatigue, weakness, low hemoglobin and lack of appetite as well as being uncomfortable from her enlarged spleen and giant hematoma that will likely take months to reabsorb into her body. 
This has been a rollercoaster of emotions for all of us. I will do my best to keep everyone posted with her status here. Please be patient if she's not reaching out individually, as she's needing to spend a lot of time sleeping and everything takes extra effort right now.