On 6 Nov 2010 02:46:53 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2010-11-04, Don Foreman wrote:
I have friends here that care, other readers please ignore.

We were at Mayo Monday and Wednesday.

We now have a course of action and treatment.

Diagnosis is 99% sure that Mary's disease is primary light-chain
amyloidosis involving her heart and gut. The 1% doubt that will be
resolved with lab results not yet available concerns the particular
form of the disease but it's really a matter of i-dotting and
t-crossing confirmation of other diagnostic results.

This is an incurable disease, a form of cancer. It's akin to leukemia
in that it involves white blood cells, different in that it involves
different white cells.

Ouch!

What does the 1% doubt cover? Something possibly better?

Not really. It concerns the detail of which particular variant of the
disease.

[ ... ]

Because there is clearly cardiac involvement and damage, sudden death
by heart failure is more probable than for a person without such
damage. We agree that sudden death by heart failure or whatever
purely beats the hell out of a lingering death fraught with pain.

That I can certainly understand and sympathize with.

Does "incurable" also eliminate a possibility of stabilizing it
at the current stage, if not causing remission?
[ ... ]

No. We're hopeful that chemotherapy will do that.