KESJ: 30 March

Monday, March 30, 2009

30 March

Jeremy has been receiving antibiotics as a precautionary measure against his elevated temperature. Blood samples were taken from his lines last night, but we won't know the results for at least 48hrs. This is because it takes that much time to grow a culture to see what bugs are in his system.

In other news, Jeremy was able to start his next stage of chemotherapy today. The 6 hour drip was administered today, so at least we are on a Monday schedule for the time being. With this set of drugs, the blood counts must exceed a certain thresholds in order for them to continue.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Definitions

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) - a rapidly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. ALL affects the type of developing white blood cells known as lymphocytes. It is the most common form of childhood leukaemia, and the most common type of childhood cancer. It also occurs in adults.

Blast cells - immature blood cells normally found in the bone marrow. Blast cells normally constitute up to 5% of all bone marrow cells. These cells divide and replenish all the normal blood cells in the marrow and circulating blood. Acute leukaemia is characterised by an accumulation of abnormal blast cells that take over the marrow and spill out into the blood stream.

Bone marrow transplant - the process of replacing bone marrow cells (stem cells) that are unhealthy, with stem cells that are healthy. The healthy stem cells are re-infused intravenously through the central line, after very strong chemotherapy and/or radiation to kill unhealthy stem cells. The re-infusion of healthy stem cells essentially rescues the patient from the chemotherapy and/or radiation, by enabling his or her bone marrow to start producing new blood cells.