A Cancer Diagnosis

In January 2011, I received a diagnosis of womb cancer;  I hadn't felt ill and had virtually no symptoms so it came as a total shock to me.  However, at the age of (almost!) 62, I have had a great life and have had the chance to do some fun things.

A few weeks ago, I heard about Evie and her illness from her grandfather;  Evie is only 18 months old and here she is with a huge fight on her hands against a form of cancer which is so rare that only a few cases are diagnosed each year in the whole world.

Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia.

There are only 25 cases per year in the whole world of JMML so there isn't a whole lot of research on it as of yet.  So far what we know about JMML is that 95% of children afflicted with it will die without treatment.  The only curative treatment for JMML is what's called a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT).  Chances of a child needing a second BMT run around 50%, especially when there is no related or family donor as in Evie's case. 

Out of 5 million people that are in the registry, not a single one matches Evie's type of marrow and the family is forced to settle with a 4/6 cord blood match later in the month.  They will be traveling to Tuscon, AZ for BMT later in the month of July and because her husband has to take over two months off of work, the family is reaching out to their community and asking for help.  

Lets all get together and help heal Evie - and by helping Evie, hopefully we'll get some action going to help the other youngsters worldwide who are born with this rare, dreadful disease.  Evie's campaign can be found at http://www.helphealevie.com.