KESJ: 20 April 2010

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

20 April 2010

T+217 or 31 weeks

First day of Term 2, and Jeremy was happy to be back at school. He must have been looking forward to it, as he woke up in the middle of the night saying "Dolls are dancing, D, D, D"! We pray that he has another enjoyable term of kindy, and that he stays healthy and doesn't catch anything from the other children at school.

This afternoon, the doctor told us that the results of last Monday's (12 April) bone marrow aspirate are MRD Negative (no detectable leukaemia cells) - praise God!

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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.