There is a little girl fighting for her life in Australia. Anika has the same form of leukemia as Mollie; she went through treatment and had three years off treatment, and then she relapsed. She is now on a relapse protocol with very, very strong chemo and she needs to get in remission before she can get a bone marrow transplant.Her situation is dire and her family is doing their best to hold up. I logged on to her site yesterday and saw that her platelets were 12 (a normal count is anywhere between 150-400) and she couldn't get a transfusion because there were no O+ CMVneg platelets available!! Her care team had to wait and watch for signs of brain hemorrhage/stroke. She finally got a transfusion today. The blood donations are not going to cure her cancer, but they are going to give her time, hopefully, for the chemo to work.
I wanted to take this opportunity to again ask anyone who can, to please donate blood. As often as you can. Platelets, needed for normal blood clotting, typically have a shelf life of only 5-7 days. Neonatal and pediatric patients often need volume-reduced platelets that have a shelf-life of less than one day. Immunocompromised adult and pediatric patients also need CMV-negative blood. CMV is a common virus, harmless to most people, but can cause severe infections for patients with weak immune systems.
June 14th just happens to be World Blood Donor Day. Click here to find out where you can give.
thank you for the reminder. anika and her family will be in my thoughts. i want to thank other donors doing the job for those of us who can't, too. mike does donations like clockwork, but i am still not allowed, based on where i have lived and when.
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