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Avery

When I was a senior in high school, my life changed forever. In my senior year, playing my last season of basketball and gearing up to play college softball that next fall, everything was looking up. I had great friends, and great family, not to mention that I had the best-looking curly hair there ever was. Back in September 2019, I noticed a knot in my right armpit. At the time, I was playing high school softball and was just moved to a new position. I thought the reason for my underarm pain had been from soreness, so I put it off until the season was over.

Options for Sperm Preservation

You may be able to take certain steps and precautions to preserve fertility before, during and after treatment. 

Coping With Cancer

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, everyone in his or her family is affected. This holds especially true when a child has cancer. Different families have different ways of coping, but there are some sound strategies that anyone can employ. For useful tools and tips that may help, see the following pages:

ALL Subtypes

The subtypes of ALL are identified based on certain features of the leukemia cells. Determining the ALL subtype is an important factor in treatment planning. The doctor will discuss with you which drug combinations are indicated based on your child’s ALL subtype.

Leukemia cells can be classified by the unique set of proteins found on their surface. These unique sets of proteins are known as “immunophenotypes.” Based on immunophenotyping of the leukemia cell, the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies ALL into two main subtypes.

Chemotherapy and Drug Therapy

Treatment of CLL is started when symptoms develop that are associated with active disease. Before starting treatment, it is important to have another FISH test to see if there are any changes to the genes and/or chromosomes of the CLL cells. 

Side Effects

Cancer therapy for chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) can sometimes produce side effects. For most patients, treatment side effects are temporary and go away once therapy ends. For other patients, side effects can be more severe, sometimes requiring hospitalization. Some patients never have any side effects.

Before you undergo treatment, talk with your doctor about potential side effects. Drugs and other therapies can prevent or manage many side effects.

Vaccine Therapy

Vaccines designed to treat cancer don't prevent the disease in the same way that conventional vaccine therapy prevents conditions such as measles or polio. The therapeutic cancer vaccines are designed to treat an already-present cancer and reduce its potential to grow.

Researchers are working on vaccines that could prevent cancer from recurring. Currently, there are no licensed blood cancer vaccines. Vaccines for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma are still in development and available only in clinical trials.

Skin and Nails

Skin-related side effects from cancer treatment include:

• Dry skin
• Redness
• Itchiness
• Skin lesions

Tell your doctor about any changes to your skin. Your doctor can recommend or prescribe appropriate treatment, including topical solutions (creams, lotions or gels) to soothe your skin or relieve itching.

Tell you doctor immediately if you notice:

Special Considerations

Surgery. Patients with PV have increased risk for bleeding complications after surgery. Because your surgeon may not be aware of your increased risk for bleeding and blood clots, coordination between your surgeon and your hematologist-oncologist is very important. For elective surgeries, it is recommended that your platelet and red blood counts be in normal range before the surgery occurs.

Signs and Symptoms

Signs and symptoms are changes in the body that may indicate the presence of disease. A sign is a change that the doctor sees during an exam or in a laboratory test result. A symptom is a change that a patient can see and/or feel.

It is common for a child with ALL to feel a loss of well-being because of the lack of normal, healthy blood cells.

Symptoms of a low red blood cell count (anemia) include:

'Chemobrain'

Chemotherapy and radiation therapy can cause problems with cognitive (mental) functions, such as concentration, memory and the ability to multitask. Most chemotherapy patients experience these effects, sometimes referred to as “chemobrain” or brain fog, to some degree, although doctors are unable to predict who might be affected.

The cognitive effects of chemotherapy for some are long-lasting. A small percentage of patients have long-term effects known as "chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment." The symptoms include a mental fogginess and effects on:

Dan

When cancer hangs your cleats up for good

At my first appointment, the physical therapist asked me why. Why did I want to run a marathon? And I didn't have an answer, partly because when you meet someone, you don't want to blurt out all sorts of emotional baggage, and that's the sort of question that can trigger a lot of baggage.

Jane

In 2008, I retired from teaching art, mostly because I was feeling tired all the time and didn’t want the program I was running to suffer because I couldn’t keep up. I figured it was old age. I was enjoying my first full year of retirement when I woke up with a backache. After two months of tests, in July 2010, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but not yet curable blood cancer in the plasma cells of the bone marrow. 

Matthew

Our Matthew was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in August 2015 at the age of 12. He relapsed with ALL in December 2016 and underwent his first bone marrow transplant in February 2017 with marrow from an anonymous male donor from New Jersey.

In January 2019, he was diagnosed with mixed phenotype acute leukemia (MPAL). He underwent his second bone marrow transplant in February 2019 with marrow from his first donor's twin brother. Our two families have become very close since we were able to meet after the first transplant.

Nicole

I first became involved in Team In Training (TNT) and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) in March of 2020 because I was very interested in running the New York City Marathon. I knew that I wanted to run for a charity that meant something to me, so I knew I had to be a part of this team.

Penny Man (Jonathan)

My name is Jonathan, but I really like to be called "The Penny Man.” I have been collecting pennies for over 15 years and then donating them to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). I first started collecting in high school in 2006 when a classmate of mine passed away from leukemia. My teacher, Mrs. Jean Cassetta, started a schoolwide campaign in partnership with LLS in memory of our friend Andrew, and I never stopped saving pennies since.

Zachary

Two months after we were married, my husband was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in July 2021. I was 33 weeks pregnant with our first baby when he was admitted to St. Louis University Hospital for the next month of induction treatment. Prior to diagnosis, Zach had been experiencing fatigue and palpitations and would become winded just walking up our flight of stairs. We thought he was having residual effects from some prior illnesses that he was hospitalized for in April and May. We know now that those instances were the beginning of his immune system starting to fail.

Luz

My name is Luz, and my story begins in a magical town in Mexico where I spent a wonderful childhood surrounded by my family. As the youngest of nine siblings, I learned the value of support and connection, values which continue to guide me today as a happily married mother of three beautiful daughters. For over twenty years, Chicago has been my home.

Maggie

My son, Benjamin, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in February 2019 at the age of four. Due to the unique nature of his presentation, he was placed in the VHR (very high risk) category and underwent three and a half years of treatment. My background is in theatre and education, but having just moved to New York, I was not working when Benjamin was diagnosed and was lucky enough to be able to devote 100% of my time to him. I spent his treatment years learning as much as I could about the disease and how I could best care for him.

Jackson

Mathura

Madeline

I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in June of 2022. I was feeling fine and went for a routine physical where it was discovered that my white blood cell count was very low. This was the beginning of my nightmare. I was slotted to give my husband my kidney before I was diagnosed and had to quickly find another donor. We did and he got his transplant and is doing well. I was hospitalized for 8 weeks where I received very aggressive induction chemo that left me malnourished and on death’s doorstep.

Liam

One of the Boston Bruin’s biggest fans, Liam Fitzgerald garnered national recognition as the “fist bump kid” and went on to raise almost $153,000 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) to help fight blood cancers.

Nikki

I was 24 and otherwise healthy, hiking the Grand Canyon (literally) with friends, when my neck started to hurt and my arm started to swell. By the end of my vacation two days later, I was in so much pain that I could barely turn my head or lift my arm. I returned to Detroit and went straight from the airport to the ER, where, after hours of tests, I learned about a softball-sized tumor in my chest cavity, which was pressing on veins near my heart, causing blood clots in my shoulder, which resulted in the swelling and pain.

Joy

On December 29, 2011, I heard those numbing words “you have cancer.” I was 23 years old, about to turn 24 and my whole world came to a screeching halt. After months of feeling “off,” multiple visits to all kinds of doctors, repeat blood work, scans and biopsies, it was finally determined that I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.