By Jake Iversen |
Updated: Tue 6:04 PM, Jul 12, 2016
For every 100,000 individuals 15 will certainly make some form of leukemia in their lifetime. Even though treatable, these cancers can easily be pretty aggressive. For one young patient, she refused to permit her own cancer diagnosis break her spirit.
Rachael Fjeldheim has actually constantly loved her sleep, so once she was obtaining much more compared to 12 hours a night not anything actually jumped out at her that something could be wrong. Yet once a doctor says you have to come in to talk lab results, you understand it’s serious.
“Then she pulled me spine and she said you have actually leukemia, and you are going to Sioux Falls today!” said Fjeldheim.
Rachael’s diagnosis was Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a cancer that impacts the production of healthy and balanced blood cells.
“Leukemias are basically divided in to acute and chronic leukemia. Acute ones are a pretty fast growing form that would certainly affect individuals pretty fast and create lots of problems. So it calls for treatment immediately” said Dr. Ahmed Galal, a hematologist along with the Avera Medical Group Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant Sioux Falls.
For Rachael and her family, that meant leaving Rapid City and spending months in the hospital for treatment. Fortunately for Rachael, her leukemia had a mutation that gained chemotherapy merely as most likely to cure her cancer as a bone marrow transplant would.
“Just what we would certainly do in this case, we would certainly handle along with chemotherapy and wait-and-see. most likely we were going to grab by and every little thing would certainly be fine, however, if the small percentage that we would certainly have actually improvement or recurrence of the illness we would certainly choose a transplant for to the next the next step.” said Dr. Galal.
Avoiding a transplant meant Skipping a hundred days in the hospital, Yet chemo was still a long hard journey.
“My very first round of chemo was 24/7, three days were double dosed for the week. So they position a select line in to my arm, I didn’t have actually to have actually a central line and they infused the chemo through there every one of week. after that from there we merely waited for every little thing to forever bottom out Then we could see that my bone marrow was executing something.” said Fjeldheim.
After that came three much more rounds of Just what Rachael dubbed “precautionary chemo.” Treatments created to kill any sort of left over cancer cells that maybe still hiding. Through it all, Rachael’s family gained sure she knew this was a fight they shared.
“They brought me lunch and supper every single day! Usually I just had regarding two bites and my dad was forcing meals down my throat since he would certainly say I have actually to sustain my weight up! I merely wasn’t hungry, not anything taste good, Yet they did everything!” said Fjeldheim.
At 22, Rachael faced a battle lots of her age will certainly never ever know. Now she’s all set to close the chapter on the past year and look toward living brand-new life at 23.
“She is a fighter she did pretty well and basically she has actually been in remission as of last Wednesday once we had her bone marrow that showed there is not considerably of the unsatisfactory cells in there.” said Dr. Galal.
She’ll still have actually inspect ups to ensure the cancer stays away, Yet it’s a safe bet that Rachael will certainly greet every appointment along with a positive attitude and a smile.
For a much better discovering on blood and lymph node cancers, Avera is hosting a Lymphoma and Leukemia Education event. The event will certainly be held at 8am on July 29th at the Avera Prairie Focus and is free to the public. Breakfast and lunch will certainly likewise be provided. For much more write-up merely call 877-AT-AVERA.
