KESJ: 23 February 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

23 February 2011

T+526

This morning Jeremy was admitted as a day patient to Turner Ward for another supervised intake of peanut. The reason for this visit to hospital was because when we tried Jeremy on about 3 or 4 Peanut M&Ms on Sunday after church, he started coughing and saying he felt sick. Thankfully, he stopped coughing after about 15 minutes, but the immunologist wanted to watch him the next time that he ate peanuts.

We crushed up a Peanut M&M and he was given about 1/16th of a peanut to eat. The immunologist watched him for an hour and he didn't develop a cough. So she told us to give him the same tiny amount of peanut every day for a month, and then (if all goes well) to increase the dose. What an unusual type of medicine - Peanut M&Ms!

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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.