Legalectric

Well this was quite a surprise. Alan was feeling tired for a couple of weeks and had a pretty large bruise on upper hip, to over a couple days larges bruises all over, and OMFD, it’s Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia. I’d had an inkling of CLL after taking photos of the bruises to send to Mayo here in RW, and hitting google, so I was pushing him hard to get in fast, and thankfully he did. Platelets were alarmingly low from Nurse Practitioner’s rather wide-eyed response, which was to get us to the ER, STAT. We were there most of the day, and then after 2nd big batch of lab results came in, he was rushed to Mayo about 4:30. He’ll be at Mayo now for 3-4 weeks, started chemo immediately, and platelets, as his were nearly zero.

Despite 2nd shift, they were on it right away, the nurses and aids were very attentive, and the Nurse Practitioner on that evening was so articulate about what’s going on. Treatment plan is to start aggressively, pretty much as explained in the link below, and see what happens.

Alan’s just getting settled in, and he’s not sure if he wants visitors yet — feel free to message him or text or call.

Treatment of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

It seems APL hits middle-aged folks with average age in the 40s, but for seniors it’s the leukemia of choice. The standard treatment before this regimen (Mayo has links to various study’s participant recruitment!) had some long-term side effects, and apparently this is better. I was wondering about treating with arsenic, remembering Kady who was treated for heartworm with arsenic and lost her marbles, and I’ve asked a few vets about long term impacts of arsenic and neither I’ve asked knew anything about it, and google knows nothing. Alan’s deemed “low risk” because it was caught fairly soon and his white blood count is below the “10k” magic number.

I’d learned some about leukemia when dealing with magnetic fields associated with transmission lines, argued need for regulatory action before the appellate court 20 years ago, but no, earlier bad decision affirmed… And I’ve long known of cancer clusters, and the increases in childhood leukemia in certain scenarios. Environmental impacts have long been ignored, and causation, that ephemeral target, has not yet been established for so many likely agents responsible.

Delaware is a waste dump of the U.S., polluted in so many ways, and Alan’s horror stories make me wonder why anyone wold live there. I’ve thought about Alan’s cancer risk having lived next to 3 nuclear reactors…

… probably downwind of TMI, and for sure downwind from the Delaware refinery that spews all over everyone in Delaware City, Port Penn, and beyond. Somebody asked, “Who’s Alan?” Just google Green Delaware! For decades Alan worked to improve Delaware, from exposing the ractice of dumping raw sewage into the Brandywine River, and being arrested for putting a “Danger Raw Sewage” sign at the outflow:

Busted again at the legislature when public participation was prohibited — with John Kowalko, later STATE REP. John Kowalko, who just retired:

And then in 2007 starting work against Minnesota incinerators, when he got a call out of the blue from someone in St. Paul wanting help on the Rock Tenn incinerator. He’d worked for DuPont as consultant, and part of that was worldwide promotion of incinerators, and he learned a LOT about what incinerators inflicted on those breathing nearby. The call from St. Paul came in when I was out there on my 2nd trip to Port Penn, and they’d wanted him to come out for a Neighbors Against the Burner gathering on the date we’d planned to get back to Red Wing, all just too coincidental! That was the start of a long collaboration with Neighbors Against the Burner and challenging Rock Tenn, the E. Phillips “Eco-Crapper” burner later tried in Rockford and stopped there too; expansion of HERC, and pushing to shut down City of Red Wing’s incinerator, now closed:

So back to Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia — need to get on the road. Suffice it to say, I’ve started on my “research.” Don’t cringe, beyond google, DOH! Years back when I was doing radio, I’d done a program. on bendictin, and another on DES, which was used with wild abandon and without informed consent on Native women. I was working at HCMC and using their medical library a LOT, and in the short time I worked at Bone Marrow Transplant I learned a lot I didn’t really want to know, that was a difficult station with so many babies and young children… I also am well aware that much has changed over the last 40 years, so there’s a lot of reading and evaluating to do to catch up.

A few available things, hope to tap into some deeper sources, but these are interesting:

Outcome of older (≥70 years) APL patients frontline treated with or without arsenic trioxide—an International Collaborative Study

An effective and chemotherapy-free strategy of all-trans retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide for acute promyelocytic leukemia in all risk groups (APL15 trial)

A scoring system for AML patients aged 70 years or older, eligible for intensive chemotherapy: a study based on a large European data set using the DATAML, SAL, and PETHEMA registries

Management of acute promyelocytic leukemia: updated recommendations from an expert panel of the European LeukemiaNet

How retinoic acid and arsenic transformed acute promyelocytic leukemia therapy