what happens when you stop treatment all together

Your questions have several possible answers depending on what stage your disease was at when you were first diagnosed, what your clinical response to therapy has been/is and what therapy you are actually talking about when you say your body cannot handle the treatment.

TKI therapy (either imatinib/Glivec or nilotinib/Tasigna in the UK) is currently the gold standard 1st line therapy for chronic phase CML.
These are targeted therapies that shut down the leukaemic cells but leave normal cells alone, so it is not the same as 'chemo'- at least as we normally understand that term.

Please let us know which therapy you have been/are treated with and where you are being treated.

Without treatment this disease will inevitably progress to a more complex and difficult to treat leukaemia with worsening symptoms caused by the increased Ph+ cells in the blood and marrow.

The time taken to reach the more advanced phases (accelerated and/or blast stage) depends on several factors as I said above, but in general the range is from 3-5 years from diagnosis of chronic phase CML.

If you cannot tolerate a particular TKI therapy (if that is what you are being treated with) then there are several alternative TKI's available.

If you are currently 'in remission' but have already stopped taking your therapy on a daily basis then you are at risk losing that remission quite quickly- depending on yor individual prognosis this could happen within 3- 6 months of stopping therapy.

Please provide more details about your case as it is very difficult to give you accurate advice.

Sandy

Hello,

I'm sorry you feel bad enough to consider stopping TKI therapy - CML is quite a treatable disease and there should be some options open to you if your current TKI/dosage is not a good fit for you.

Sandy and I could probably give you some advice on treatment routes, but we really will need some more info from you to give an informed opinion:

- Which country are you being treated in?

- Was Sprycel the first TKI you were prescribed or were you prescribed another TKI initially?

- What was your last PCR test result - %BCR-ABL?

- What is your daily dosage of Sprycel?

- Do you have any complications with your CML, such as mutations?

If you can provide some more information, someone on the forum may be able to suggest an alternate treatment path which improves your quality of life.

Chris