I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) on March 8th 1999. I went to Accident and Emergency at the Royal Sussex County Hospital with chest pains and was sent home, but when we got home, my mother received news that there was something wrong with my blood results. There followed a long period of finding me a hospital bed, and I eventually ended up in the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton. Nobody was telling me anything, but the fact that I was being admitted to the Wolfson Children's Cancer Ward was pretty much a giveaway. Even though I wasn't told until the following morning, I felt I already knew.
I'm currently on a regime known as UKALL 97, I think. I don't really know what it
means - I just know that they pump loads of drugs into me. *g*
Neither my brother or my sister were matches for bone marrow transplant, so I probably
won't be having a transplant, since unrelated transplants are much more risky. However,
because I'm Philadelphia chromosome positive, it means I'm a high risk case, and so
nobody's really quite sure what the best option would be. A donor is
being found through my mum's friends in Hong Kong (a UK donor would be no good because of
my ethnic origins) but I'm pretty sure it's just a precautionary measure. Like me, my mum
is hoping for a quick remission without relapse, but we want to be safe.
Actually, here's a rather interesting piece of news. My doctors have found that worldwide, there is no prior record of someone having retinoblastoma and ALL. There were, I believe, 2 people who had retinoblastoma and AML, the other type of leukaemia, but not ALL. So I'm the only person on record to ever have this combination of cancer. Not something to be proud about really, but it's quite cool...