Janna's Battle

Janna was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia 3 weeks after having her first baby girl, Clara.  This is a rare diagnoses for someone Janna's age, with AML usually a type of leukemia that is mostly found in people over 60. Even more rare is the myeloid sarcoma tumor that presented, which indicates Leukemia occurring outside the bone marrow.  It is very aggressive, but when found in time, it is also highly reactive to chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Janna's treatment regiment so far has included induction chemotherapy, which is a highly intense regiment of chemotherapy.  Induction chemotherapy for Janna included 5 days of chemo treatments, receiving treatments of cyterabine twice a day and one treatment of idarubicin each day for 3 days.  It was followed by several weeks of effectively not having an immune system.  Janna received several blood transfusions during this time frame to help with the side effects.  Induction chemotherapy is usually done inpatient for about 3 weeks.  Janna was released after 6 days of being in the hospital - highly unusual, but the doctors believed Janna could recover just as well at home (if not better) being around family.  But, she had to take every precaution to stay away from sickness - any sign of any sickness and Janna should rush back to the emergency room for immediate treatment.

This was followed by a round of consolidation chemotherapy, or 5 days of daily outpatient infusions followed by a couple weeks of transfusions to help blood counts recover.  She also did 12 days of radiation.  For the best chance at a cure, Janna will undergo a bone marrow transplant in the summer of 2013.

We've been blessed and guided this far and continue to have optimism and faith in the future.