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)

It's a New Day!

Chemo has been done since Sunday and she made it through once again with flying colors! tomorrow cells will arrive and hopefully by evening she will receive them, they have already started one of the gvhd drugs, but at a lower dose and she will get one more drug to prevent gvhd so she doesn't get a horrible case but they won't give her the third drug to prevent it. usually they give three but they will only give two at lower doses. so it could take a couple weeks to get gvhd, they can't let her go until her blood counts are safe enough and if she gets gvhd, which i hope she will, they will keep her longer. so we wait to see what happens. but as of now there are no blasts, which is just in time to get the cells and they will kill the rest of the blasts. pray for just enough gvhd to cure her! Candice (mom)

January 27th Update on Abigail's Treatment for AML

Abbi is on day 8 of chemo and just a couple of days ago started having feelings of nausea and diarrea. they were able to get a stool sample and she has roto virus which they can do nothing for but hydrate her if her diarrea gets worse, but so far it is only once a day. but her tummy hurts and she only gets relief when she lays down, they have her on antibiotics for fevers just to make sure, but the antibiotics can't do anything for the virus she has to pass it on her own, as soon as she gets these stem cells it will help her blood count recover and fight things off better. she has not eaten in about 5 days so they were talking about an ng tube but she had a really bad bloody nose 2 days ago and since this tube goes up her nose they thought it was best not to, also she hates the tube, and i am glad they won't do it. so they will do iv nutrition instead. but that can be harder on her liver. so they will watch her liver counts, also Abbi was fortunate enough to be able to receive a donated I pad 2 from an organization her social workers found on the internet. has not arrived yet but hopefully tomorrow. i hope it gets her mind off feeling crappy, they do give her benadryl and morphine pretty much around the clock now it makes her tummy feel better so she can sleep. and she does not want to get out of bed except to go to the bathroom so she isn't moving around enough or breathing deep enough to clear out the junk in her lungs, i guess you can get tiny parts of lung collapse which she has had before in transplant. but it does clear up and i guess she can blow bubbles to help take deep breaths without even realizing it. we can not wait for Wednesday to come so she can get her stem cells and start to get better. well it is 4 am and i couldn't go back to sleep so i thought i would write an update. now i will try, goodnight or should i say goodmorning.