KESJ: 19 June 2010

Sunday, June 20, 2010

19 June 2010

T+277

An unsettled night, with Jeremy spiking a 39.4 fever around midnight and another 38.1 fever in the morning. Thankfully, his fevers responded to Panadol and so we let him go to the K-2 Bush Dance in the afternoon. For weeks he had been eagerly looking forward to the Bush Dance - at nights when he woke up, he would ask me "Is it the Bush Dance today?". We made sure that he had a nap beforehand, and although he didn't feel up to dancing, he was very happy to be there and watch the other children.

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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.