Severe Aplastic Anema
Marie was 5 years old when she began getting sick. She got her 5 year old booster shots and everything started to go wrong. She was tired and couldn't stay awake for long. She started to bruise and stayed sick. We went to the doctor several times and nobody knew what was wrong. This went on until August 7th. She started kindergarten and would come home and pass out for the night until morning. Then on August 24th, she woke up and had a bad cough and couldn't breathe. We took her to the ER and they did a CBC and found her platelet count was 17,000. She was then taken to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, Al. There she went through testing to see what was wrong. September 28, 2007 she was diagnosed with Severe Aplastic Anemia. She went through drug treatment for 6 months. Then we looked for a donor for a bone marrow transplant. She was admitted to the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, AL. She stayed in the Stem Cell unit for 30 days. She received an unrelated donor that was almost a perfect match. Now she has a normal system for an 8-year-old child. This saved our little girl’s life.
