Beating Leukemia
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There are several items in this section. We want people to understand on a day-to-day basis what happens to you when you are being treated for leukemia/cancer. We want to share with you what we recorded every single day. We have also included bone marrow biopsy reports that are given fairly often to patients so patients can understand what they can expect. We also included a description of our doctor who led us to success. Finally, we included an interview with our doctor about the conclusion of APL and Stephanie’s APL Journal.
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blast and 2 lymphocytes for size comparison
The red “apple” like cells are red blood cells that carry oxygen around for the body. They were low in numbers, which explained your exhaustion before the bone marrow biopsy. The small blue cells are part of the “guards” cells called lymphocyte (the ANC was not present in this photo because there were so few of them). The large blue cell is the bad “guy,” so called blast or APL cell. As you can see, it is large in size, vicious looking and there were many of them in the marrow. That is why they were “strong” and beating up your other smaller “good cells.” They were the dominant cells then. That is why the chemotherapy needed to be stronger to suppress them and level the “field” for the smaller good cells to come back and take hold. |
A brief explanation of each item will be at the beginning of it. They are: