No offense to my "cancer kids," but if you all would puh-leeze stop dying and relapsing, I'd appreciate it. Just kidding, young ones, there's a whole host of you who've graduated from "The List of Four" and are now in college, back in fourth grade, on the swim team, and just generally kicking cancer's booty.
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| Miss Hannah, looking like she might wanna chew glass... but lovely and colorful, as usual! |
I want to talk to my Dear Readers about Miss Hannah -- yes, my hero. If you've been following my logical and well laid out presentation of her story, you know that she recently suffered a relapse of osteosarcoma, with spread to her lung. The good news is that a (relatively) simple surgery may have caught it early in the form of a nodule with clean edges. So, that's worth a "yay!" -- just don't scare your co-workers with too loud a scream of joy.
The down side of chemo for osteosarcoma is the "side effect" of leukemia, which Hannah now has, as well. That's worth a scream of another sort, and you probably should wait until you've some privacy before letting loose.
But you know me! I'm not one to wallow in self-pity, oh no! And in this case, since I am not the one battling two cancers at once, why should I? Sorry, I got confused there for a moment, or a decade...
So here is the deal.
Be a bone marrow donor, because that's what Hannah is now working toward. It's an arduous process, and she is, of course, taking things zen-like, as they come. But her transplant coordinators and family can't afford the luxury of laying around doing chemotherapy, relaxing in that comfy hospital bed, and chowing down on jello.
This is the latest post from Hannah's mom, shared at her CaringBridge site:
Today starts week 2 of this 4-6 week stay. She has 3 more days of chemo (including today) and then we wait for her counts to come back up before they let us go home for a few days.
Today I spoke with the head nurse for Dr B...my other kids were tested to see if they are a match for donating bone marrow to Hannah. We got results...NONE of my other kids are a match for Hannah. The nurse said "they didn't even come CLOSE to being a match". *sigh* Soooo...plan B. They've already started the registry search. Because so many of you have offered to be a bone marrow donor for Hannah, we are in the process of putting together a donor drive. I will let you know when I have details.
Thank you for keeping us uplifted in thoughts and prayers.
From the National Marrow Donor Program, here are some frequently asked questions, with answers!
Matching a patient
Deciding to donate
Donating bone marrow
Donating PBSC
Learning about the patient
