My husband last week told me he has leukemia.

I was shocked, I cried, I looked for information on the illness and found some facts about it. I shared this information with him. He promptly told me that he would refuse all treatment. Other than crying and waiting, what else can I do?

I did post my question here http://www.caring.com/cancer
Got some wonderful answers. Has any body gone through something like this.
I Still don't know what to do.




[This Message was Edited on 08/20/2009]

I hope you will read this, and show it to your husband----this isn't a very active board, I'm afraid, but I hope you check back.

There are several types of Leukemias, but the main difference is between a chronic type (usually CML or CLL) and the acute type (usually AML for adults, but occasionally ALL). Acute Leukemias are aggressive and require treatment pretty much right away. That was the type I had (AML) beginning about 3.5 years ago.

The important thing for you and your husband to know is, Leukemia treatment is a whole different ballgame now. This disease is no longer the death sentence it was once! I really want to stress that. The treatments and new drugs for all types of Leukemias are expanding rapidly, and there are even more innovative treatments just around the corner.

I got AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) in March '06 originally at age 49. I was treated with what's called an induction round of chemo to get me back into remission, then did four more consolidation rounds of chemo to keep me in remission for as long as possible. It took about 5 months, but then I returned to my previous job, and life went on as usual. I felt healthy again, with no adverse effects of chemo (the hair grows back!) Life was good.

Then, in March of '08, I relapsed. The Leukemia was back, but again---and I want you to hear this----it was a setback, but NOT a death sentence. Because my oncologist and I had always had a back-up plan, that if I relapsed, I'd have a bone marrow transplant. And that's what I did in the summer of '08, using a (generous) matched unrelated donor. While a bone marrow transplant is a big deal, and no one would do one "for fun", I want to assure you that it is very do-able----I know this from my own experience. The side effects, the complications that can occur---and I had very few of these---are manageable by the transplant team because they know exactly how to do this, what to watch for, how to tackle anything that comes up. Yes, there are risks, but the biggest risk of all would have been to do nothing!

Anyway, here I am over a year later, working again (and have been for months now), enjoying life to the fullest. I don't feel like I ever even had a transplant. I take no drugs for transplant, and haven't in months. Life is good again. There's always the risk that it could return, and even if it did, I still have back-up plans in place with my doctors. But there's also a great chance that I'll grow old without ever having to deal with this again.

I don't know what type of Leukemia your husband has, or how old he is, but as my own husband says, there's never been a better time to get this disease if you had to. Because the developments in Leukemia treatment have been pretty amazing. I feel like your husband is responding to the shock of the diagnosis----and I agree, it's surely a shock----and has almost been paralyzed by hearing that word Leukemia. And he's been afraid to hear more. But the news is good! The only BAD thing would be to not treat it----with acute Leukemias, you'd only live about 3-4 months at most left untreated. There is one Chronic type that has a watch-and-wait treatment plan (some people don't develop symptoms for a while) but the other needs to be treated, and there's a great drug called "Gleevic", now a newer one called "Sprycel" that has done wonders for these chronic Leukemia patients.

And IF he ever needed a transplant, and that's only an if at this point, they now have lots of options there, too, like "mini-transplants" for more elderly patients, cord blood transplants for folks who have a hard time finding a matching donor----these experts have many tricks up their sleeves these days to save patients.

But no treatment IS a death sentence. This is not a cancer that ever responded to any alternative, homeopathic treatment. So please try to let your husband know that there IS hope, LOTS of it, if he sees a good oncologist/hematologist for treatment.

I hope you see this Angela, and do respond back if you do, please. Best of luck to you both!

Pam

Why even have a cancer message board at Pro-Health. Hopefully Angela got some sound advice elsewhere, as she certainly didn't get it here. My wish is that her husband got treatment. Hope so.

Hi Angela:

Hope you got answers elsewhere, but if not, try the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

www.LLS.org

also another great website is:

chemocare.com

Good luck to you and your husband.

I had stage 3 large diffuse b-cell non hodgkins lymphoma. I thought I was looking at a much shorter life. I was very fortunate, and my last 2 PET scans results have shown no evidence of disease. It was very scary, but I got through it. Treatment has come so far, and continues to advance faster than we can even keep up with it.

Ingrid