KESJ: 21 May 2012

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

21 May 2012

T+979

Jeremy lost his first tooth tonight!

His tooth had been a bit wobbly for a while, but became much looser thanks to being hit in the mouth with a soccer ball at lunchtime today. He was worried about his tooth falling out during his swimming lesson this afternoon, but was happy to go swimming when told that his teacher would be able to dive down and retrieve it if required! But his tooth waited until the middle of dinner to come out, and Jeremy was pleased to be given lots of frozen jelly pencils and grapes to stop the bleeding.

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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.