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

Well it looks like abbi has to be readmitted tomorrow...

Well it looks like abbi has to be readmitted tomorrow to do another round of aml chemo followed by another stem cell boost because there were still a small amount of lukemia cells in the bone marrow and they want to go for the cure, so gvhd works better if there are no lukemia cells, so she will recieve 8 more days of the same therapy and then they will give her the rest of the cells. then after all of that they will give her gvhd. PLEASE PRAY AGAIN FOR MINIMAL SIDE EFFECTS AND GVHD

Abbi's white blood cells and neutrophils have started going up!

Abbi's white blood cells and neutrophils have started going up and they are starting to switch meds from IV to mouth and started talking about discharge as long as she is eating and drinking and taking meds. but they are still gonna push for graft vs host disease, they will give her more stem cells a month from her transplant which would be around the 1st of march. and they think they can give it to her and she might, depending on the severity of the gvhd, have to be back in hospital. but we pray she will get just enough gvhd to kill the remaining lukemia cells.

Abbi could be discharged as early as next week! they are scheduling a bone marrow biopsy for tuesday to check for engraftment and leukemia cells. they will stop her prograf (used to prevent gvhd) within 2 weeks or so and that could create gvhd by abruptly stopping it. depending on engraftment results they will give her more donor lymphocytes to keep pushing gvhd. as you can guess we really want gvhd, so far so good they are happy! PLEASE PRAY FOR GVHD AND GREAT BIOPSY RESULTS!

News of Hope Arrives...

Abigail from 1st BMT in 2008

It is happening! her cells are engrafting and it is time to talk discharge! although they are still hoping for graft vs host disease, even if they let her go to family house and monitor her she still has time to get it. and if they don't see any by end of month they will give her more stem cells, since they have extra frozen. they are gonna push this gvhd and i pray she gets some. they think they can give it to her. and depending on the severity (which mild is great) but they have no idea how it will present itself, she might have to be back in hospital. but if she just gets some skin rash or some gut gvhd i think they will be able to treat her outpatient. either way i don't care just as long as she gets it. even though they still say it is a small chance for cure, i believe it is a great chance for cure! because with jesus all things are possible! they will check her to see if any lukemia cells survived. she did get a very potent mixture of chemo and it wiped out all lukemia cells they could see, and the stem cells are going to do their job and wipe out the rest. that is where the gvhd can come in and be helpful at killing the rest of them. but i pray that none of them survived and they were wiped out, never to return! because this little girl deserves to go home to her friends and family and live a normal life! and that is exactly what she will do. will update later

February 3rd, 2012

The very generous donor's cells are in and Abbi is doing great! day + 2 today. sounds weird but i can't wait till she gets graft vs host disease. it is kinda funny we want her to get sick. but it seems to be the only way she will beat this. her hair is falling out, this morning she was a little sad but she is accepting it, grandma Kate came up and cut her hair and cleaned it up some.  Dennis and Blake went home yesterday so Blake could go back to school and Dennis could pay the bills. so this is just a quick update, everything is good, it will take about a week or so for her to en-graft the cells again. i will let you know how it goes. Candice (Mom)