The last visit of the year was once again at Hammersmith, where we were seen by another member of Prof. Goldman's team. He explained the situation with the hunt for the donors. We found out that a donor on one of the UK registries had still not come to give his blood. This kind of thing is frustrating, as your depends these people, but if they don't make an appointment to have their bloods taken then it feels like a minor setback.

Nonetheless, I was told my blood was to be sent to Germany for CTLP tests to be carried out with the blood to two potential donors in Germany. I'll have to find out what CTLP stands for, but essentially, they involve mixing the host and donor's blood and examining the reactions if any. The less reactivity between the blood cultures the better, because this means that my body should accept the donor's blood with a lower risk of serious rejection.

We also wanted to find out more on the progress of STI-571. There has been a lot of coverage in the press recently following a conference in the US where the results of the recent studies were announced. Since you can't expect the press to print everything as they often sensationalise the stories, I wanted to know more about the trials that were conducted, especially more about the remission rates that have been achieved by the drug.

It is being touted as one of the most exciting developments in the treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia, and therefore I have become interested in getting hold of this drug to start treatment. Although there is limited data on the success of this drug, if has great potential, then I don't see the arm in taking the it. At best, I could achieve a long term remission, and live a healthy life. At worst, it doesn't sort me out, but then I'd still have the option of a bone marrow transplant, which if successful will cure me but if not it could kill me.

I see STI as a way of giving myself every possible chance of treatment before taking the riskier path of a bone marrow transplant. As it happened, the registrar couldn't answer our questions and we were fortunate enough to speak with the professor himself. The prof explained that STI was a better drug than interferon, but that the only current long term cure remained the BMT. However, we all expressed an interest in learning more about STI and how to get hold of it, but we told that it wouldn't receive the necessary medical clearance for NHS use in the UK until 2002. Despite this the prof asked me to see him next time, which we took as being a good sign, perhaps to discuss this further. The meeting is on 29th Jan, so I shall update the pages then.