Early this summer television anchor Robin Roberts made a tearful announcement. "As many of you know, five years ago I beat breast cancer. Now sometimes treatment for cancer can lead to other serious medical issues and that's what I'm facing right now. It is something called MDS- Myelodysplastic Syndrome," says Robin Roberts. That's when she put a face to myelodysplastic syndrome. MDS is a collection of blood disorders most people have never heard of. "Myelodysplastic Syndrome is kind of under the radar because in some ways it's a malignancy but it's really a disorder of the bone marrow that causes a failure to produce the normal cells in the bone marrow. The older term is pre-leukemia because some, but not all, patients over time will evolve into an acute leukemia," says Dr. William Harwin, oncologist on Lee Memorial Health System's medical staff. Not quite a cancer itself, it has shares many characteristics. "An uncontrolled proliferation, which cells don't have the normal stops and normal controls and it's also at
