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