Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is characterized by an excess of blasts in the bone marrow 5-20%. They become dysfunctional. The early stem cells don't make enough red cell, white cells and platelets. You don't have to receive chemotherapy and/or radiation to get this disease. Simple aging is enough. Most patients with MDS who have not received anti-cancer treatment are in their 70's and 80's.
While you may avoid the thought of leukemia when reading information on the internet, the only difference between MDS and leukemia is that the term "leukemia" is only used when the number of blasts reaches 20% or more. This is not all negative. A person with a 5q- deletion may take Revlimid and live quite a long time with no transfusions.
However, treatment-related MDS or secondary MDS is often more severe and difficult to treat than de novo MDS (unknown changes to the bone marrow). When people die from this, it is usually because they can't make enough infection fighting cells and get overwhelming infections such as pneumonia. Or they develop acute leukemia. This type of leukemia that develops in people with MDS is virtually untreatable (different from other kinds of leukemia).
For younger patients, the best hope is a stem cell transplant from someone else's bone marrow. But aside from transplant, there are no magic bullets. This is a bad disease that affect mainly older people and those that have received anti-cancer treatment.
I wish her luck!
http://cancerfocus.org/forum/showthread.php?t=281
http://www.cancerfocus.org/mds/myelo...e_basics_i/299