This is remarkable.

About a year ago, I posted about a family friend - she's a doctor, actually - who had been diagnosed with a scary form of leukemia.

She had gone through one round of chemo but that didn't seem to push it into remission, so they decided to haul out the "big guns" - a bone marrow transplant. I know enough about these things to know that they're quite risky - they effectively destroy your immune system and then replace it with a transplant from someone else. It's my understanding that the patient has to be in strict isolation during the time...

Anyway, she had had the transplant (I knew it was in process, but didn't know when). In her Christmas letter for this year, she had great news - the transplant worked, she was home, and the latest blood test showed that the "Philadelphia chromosome" was gone. I didn't know what that was - so I looked it up. It's a translocation (part of a chromosome moved from where it's supposed to be) that's found in 95% of the people with the disease (and, apparently, not in people who don't have it). I take that its absence is an indication that her diseased bone marrow was replaced by that of the donor. So, presumably, she's cured. She thanked everyone who had offered prayers during her treatment.

I've read a little about bone-marrow transplantation over the years. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's nothing short of miraculous.