Former 49ers Coach Bill Walsh

[Mjcpr]

Didn't see this anywhere but he announced yesterday that he has leukemia. I'm sure there are hundreds of kinds or whatever but leukemia complications are what Ed Bradley died from.

[Newbomb Turk]

Couple of interesting things I found on ESPN. Best wishes to him.



Walsh said the cancer first was diagnosed in 2004 but he feels better since a series of blood transfusions in the past month.



Walsh lost his eldest child, Steve, to leukemia at age 46 in May 2002.

[BeetDigger]

My dad is battling leukemia as we speak. He has gotten more pints of blood than I can count. New blood always makes him feel better. There are lots of types of leukemia. There are two major categories (as I understand it): Chronic and Acute. Chronic patients receive treatment and the cancer goes into remission for a period of time (up to five years or more). They then go through treatment again, with the hope of sending it into another five year remission. Some patients have lived many, many years with the chronic form. Acute is much more agressive and the patients tend to live much shorter lives. They chemo treatments can extend their life, but not for five years.

My dad was diagnosed with the acute form. However he is in too bad of health to go through regular chemo. It would kill him. Instead, he is receiving an injectable, low dose chemo over a two month regimen of one week of treatment, three weeks off, one week of regimen, three weeks off. Thankfully, the first series, last year, sent the leukemia into remission for over a year. So far, it has prevented a full outbreak of the acute form and has allowed the leukemia to be treated as they would chronic leukemia.

The bad thing about older people and chemo is that you suppress the white blood cells so much that you become suseptable to infection and pneumonia. Younger patients are much more resiliant and respond to the treatments for infection and pneumonia much better. Older patients can catch pneumonia and have it get bad in a very short period of time and thus, they end up dying from the pneumonia.

Now I probably have some things either wrong or not completely correct, so Doc needs to chime in for a more complete and accurate explanation. They didn't cover leukemia in engineering or business school so I only know what the doctor tells me and what I read.

[King Crimson]

best to your Dad BeetDigger.

[Newbomb Turk]

yes Beet - wishing the best for your Dad.

[whatsername]

yeah, same here... wishing for the best for your dad.

[StoopTroup]

Wow Beet....

Sounds like a your Dad's a fighter...

I wish you and your Dad and Family the best.

Medicine has come a long way in regards to Luekemia...

I didn't know about the injectable chemo...

Thanks for sharing and God Bless you and your Dad and Family...

[BeetDigger]

Thanks for the wishes everyone. I didn't really post my dad's story looking to elicit your responses, but I do really appreciate them.

The reason that I posted it was just to provide some more information about the disease. I have learned about it just because of him having it. I guess that's the way it is with most diseases, you learn about them through necessity.

The injectable chemo is not as effective, in general, as the other forms. In his case, it is the best alternative and he is responding pretty well to it. It is a drug called Vidaza. It was developed to treat some other disease, I can't remember which one, but there have been some cases where it was used to treat leukemia with mixed success. When he began receiving it the cancer center had no idea how to use it. They had to read up on the information to find out how it is to be mixed and delivered. I guess he will be one of the case studies out there for other doctors to review when they have patients in similar situations.

Anyway, read up on leukemia if you have some time. I hope that you do it because you WANT to not because you HAVE to. And if you have the ability to do so, donate blood or plasma. Before my mom died, she had donated over 5 gallons in her lifetime. It was probably closer to 10 but I could only find the five gallon pin the Red Cross had given her. Knowing that she gave to other agencies that didn't share records with the Red Cross, I am sure that she gave at least 5 more.