Abigail just before 2008 diagnosis

•  Here is the update, Abbi's ANC is 470 reaching 500 hopefully by tomorrow. they have stopped the prograf, the med that was preventing , to hopefully trigger GVHD. she is doing good. ready to get a break from this hospital, like i have said depending on the severity of the graft vs host disease she could be readmitted. or be treated outpatient but stay close to hospital. if she doesn't get the GVHD soon, probably a few weeks, they will give her a big donor lymphocyte infusion. all prayers to be for her getting GVHD and no leukemia cells in her bone marrow biopsy. i read a story last night about a child who had myelodysplastic syndrome like Abbi, and his turned to AML within days of diagnosis. he had a couple rounds of chemo and a bone marrow transplant from his sister, that was in 1999, he developed GVHD and went into remission, the moms last post was in 2004 and he was still cleared of disease, just more reassurance that this is possible. i will let you all know when she is discharged. Mom Candice

Abbi is doing good, her bone marrow is starting...

  ...to produce new cells. slower than last time, but last time was actually really fast, this is more normal. her neutrophils are 220 they need to be 500 for more than 3 days and they can discharge her only to go to family house and get a break, then god willing get graft vs host disease and come back to hospital depending on the severity. she is so ready to be out of here. 

Abbi's neutrophils went from 380 on Monday to 250 yesterday to 470 today, oh the frustrating fluctuation of blood cells, they have stopped the prograf, that is the med to prevent gvhd, cold turkey to hopefully trigger GVHD. and she could be discharged this weekend. she at least needs a break from the hospital before she comes back with GVHV!  Mom Candie

 

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Waiting, waiting, waiting for engraftment, day +8. she is doing really good though, they say she has a tough body. we are just so bored and she is making her own lip gloss and doing nurses nails, she has 45 nail polishes. she goes on you tube to see how to do makeup and different nail polish designs, very creative. Mom

Shy Tom...

Shy Tom video

Nails, Nails, Nails...

The Challenge video

Abbi has been readmitted to the hospital in March 2012

Abbi has been readmitted to the hospital since I last updated to have another round of chemo, same as before. they found still a small amount of leukemia cells and if we want this to work the best possible chance is to have no cells left. so we do this all over again, she is through day 4 of this treatment. they are only doing 8 days this time. so far she has had no side effects, the first round early on she wasn't eating and had contracted the rota virus. and had fevers the first couple days on and off. but she is still eating now and has been able to leave the room yesterday to go to school and playroom. but today it seems her ANC is almost 500 which is neutropenic so she will have to go to those places at a special time alone without other kids around. her platelets are 117,000 which is so good she might get through this without a bloody nose, which she had a very bad one last time. but since her ANC is dropping from chemo (white blood cells and neutrophils) soon her platelets will be low but at least we started out in a good place with them. so plan is to end this round on Saturday afternoon and wait 48 hrs and then on Monday evening or so give her the frozen stem cells saved from the last collection. and the plan is the same to try to cause GVHD. since they found out there were cancer cells left they stopped her prograf cold turkey and she could still develop GVHD now during chemo or at anytime. but GVHD can happen anytime before day 100 of engraftment or after and chronic GVHD is what we want as it lasts longer and gives her the best possible chance for cure. Chronic is after 100 days and acute is before but acute almost always turns into chronic. so i think she needs a little of acute GVHD to get chronic GVHD. i will let you know what happens.  Mom Candice

Abigail sings to video music in 2008

Nurse Artist...

Charicature of Abbi by a UCSF nurse

 "Abbi is doing great once again, 

day 2 down 6 more to go and then another stem cell boost, they were very optimistic since they are able to do another cycle of chemo on her." 

2/26/2012