We just got back from our Thursday stint at the clinic. With the resurgence of some of my MF patches in the last week, Dr. Hosing sent me to see Dr. Dabaja, my radiation doctor from last fall, to get her opinion as to whether some localized radiation on those patches is called for. Having gone through whole-body radiation last fall, Dr. Dabaja said today that I have too many patches right now for more radiation to be feasible. It would pretty much require doing the whole-body thing all over again, which, besides being dangerous so soon after last fall, would also be ineffective. She wants to wait two weeks and see if the decrease in my tachrylimus medication, which began today, will cause my new immune system to start fighting my MF. Here's hoping. This puts us in the very uneasy position of just sitting around for the next few days waiting for things to happen. The best outcome, like I said, will be if the only thing that happens is that we start to notice that my MF patches begin to subside. The worst outcome is if I develop a bad case of graft-versus-host disease (gvhd). That's when my new immune system identifies one or more of my normal systems (typically skin, intestinal, or liver) as foreign, and attacks it. If that happens, we are supposed to immediately go to the MDACC emergency room. If they confirm gvhd, I think readmission to the hospital so that they can get control of the situation is common. We could also see a combination of a little bit of gvhd AND my new immune system starting to attack the MF. Dr. Dabaja says we should know within a week which way this is going to play out. So here we sit, watching and waiting. And hoping.