bloodcancer - For A Cure NW

From a representative of Seattle Children’s Hospital to For A Cure NW:

“Your funds have made a meaningful impact on families…

One of the key populations followed by the High-Risk Leukemia and Lymphoma Program are kids who have refractory disease. For many years, patients who did not respond to up-front treatment would receive palliative chemotherapy until they succumbed to their disease. Now, with the development of new novel therapies, targeted drugs, and immunotherapy, kids have more options, and refractory leukemia is treated more like a chronic condition. Instead of weeks to months, treatment can now be months to years to with a goal to get a patient into remission and maintain that remission.

As patients undergo these therapies, they are sometimes on treatment for years. As parents take time off work, go through any possible savings they may have had, and exhaust community resources, we have been at a loss for how to provide additional resources during a financial crisis. With the donations through the For A Cure NW fund, we have been able to provide additional assistance to help with transportation to get families to treatment, help play for a portion of their rent/mortgage so they can maintain their home and cover bills so that a parent can take time off to be together as a family during end of life care. We are truly appreciative.”

-S

Story Written By: Tom Hayes

Two and a half years after diagnosis I relapsed. After relapsing, I was told I would repeatedly relapse the rest of my life each time I achieved remission. But a stem-cell transplant reduces the chance of relapse to less than 10%. (It is also essentially known as a bone-marrow transplant). I decided to start the search for a donor.

Before receiving a transplant, I had to be given more chemotherapy to return to a state of remission (less than 5% cancer cells in the blood). You typically won’t be a candidate for transplant, otherwise. Within a few months of relapsing, I was told that the international registry for stem-cell/bone-marrow donors had determined that there were 40 people in the world who were a ‘strong match’ for my blood profile and a successful transplant requires this. One donor had an additional two markers that made his ‘stem cells’ the best match. [read more]