KESJ: 9 April 2009

Thursday, April 9, 2009

9 April 2009

No fever to date, but yesterday the community nurse took a sample of Jeremy's blood to check his blood counts. She telephoned later in the afternoon to let us know that his haemoglobin (red blood cell count) was low, and therefore he needed to have a blood transfusion. We were surprised, because he has had so much energy over the past few days and we thought that his haemoglobin would be higher. So today we went to hospital for a 3.5 hour blood transfusion.

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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.