Amazing Cancer Care: Adriana's Story	cancer care orthopedic care cardiology care neurology care neonatology care	neurosurgery care oncology care hemotology care gastroenterology care one amazing place    DONATE NOW
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Our journey began with a poke of Adriana's fingertip on that visit in 2000. The results of her blood test were off the charts, literally. A test of Adriana's bone revealed Adriana had acute promyelocyticleukemia (APL), an aggressive type of leukemia. After consulting on the course of treatment with oncology specialists at Children's Hospital Oakland's, we began treatments.

Two weeks into treatment Adriana started having almost every complication on the list. During that time, I most fully appreciated the advantage of being in a hospital just for kids. There was almost no department at Children's Hospital whose specialists did not participate in securing Adriana's health.

• Cardiologists addressed her high blood pressure.
• Gastroenterologists helped her with her severe nausea.
• Radiologists and infectious disease doctors were called into figure out the source of her inexplicable, long-lasting fevers.
• Dieticians set up a special diet for Adriana to help herpancreatitis.

After 12-weeks we were home and Adriana returned to school. Pediatric oncologist Jim Feusner, MD, and the oncology team kept a very close eye on her monthly blood tests as well as a bone marrow aspirate and a polymerase-chain-reaction test (PCR) every six months to monitor her for relapse.

One year after our discharge, tests confirmed a relapse was more than likely. Dr. Feusner and the director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at Children's, Mark Walters, MD, advised a bone marrow transplant as a way of staying one step ahead of an imminent relapse. The procedure involved taking special, immature cells (called stem cells) from a donor's bone marrow and giving them to Adriana.

Adriana's 12 year-old sister, Reena, became her bone marrow donor. Adriana's transplant was a textbook case. Although she had to endure more chemotherapy and treatments with blood products and antibiotics, there were no complications. We stayed at Children's Hospital for two months.

We were happy for eighteen months and then Adriana's relapse shocked us. Adriana's sister's donor cells had been 98 percent in charge six months earlier, but the aggressive APL had its own agenda. It took two rounds of chemotherapy to get Adriana into remission. The final round of chemo, however, involved another prolonged hospitalization. We stayed in the new Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) unit where kids are able to leave their rooms and mingle in the hall-ways and the playroom, which is open 24 hours.

Again many specialists and departments at Children's Hospital participated in securing Adriana's health:

• The Infectious Diseases department studied her charts to see why her fever was reaching 106 degrees.
• The hospital blood bank worked to secure much needed and hard-to-find white blood cell donations so Adriana's body could fight a deadly infection.
• A physical therapist came to Adriana's room to help her get physically stronger.

And often friendly faces popped inside the room, and people offered to do anything that could bring us comfort at a very difficult time.

It was decided that Adriana had to face a second transplant. Dr. Walters suggested that this time Adriana's older brother, Anthony, be the donor. They took stem cells from his blood stream. To prepare for the transplant, Adriana had to endure rounds of chemotherapy and radiation which placed so much stress on her body that she ended up in an isolation room in the Intensive Care Unit, fearing heart failure. The efforts of the entire staff made it possible for her to return to the BMT unit. Tears came to my eyes to see her once again in the BMT unit enjoying music lessons from Child Life staff.

With nine months of agony during Adriana's third bout with leukemia behind us, we were able to go home joyously. Every month Adriana is feeling better and better. We don't know what the future will bring, but we live at peace, knowing that we, as well as our care providers at Children's, have done the best we can. I'm grateful to all of the hospital staff not only for the expert medical care they provided, but for the way they made us feel-as if we were their top priority, never "just another patient."