Search Results

David

My dad, David, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on March 1, 1993, after looking at his blood under a microscope in college class. He started three years of intense chemotherapy on March 8, 1993, and finished it on January 26, 1996, while a third-year medical student. He was told that there was a 50% survival at five years and 30% survival at 10 years and that he would likely not be able to have children. During that time, he got married. Two years after finishing chemo, my oldest brother was born. I have three older brothers and an older sister.

Christopher

Christopher was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on July 9, 2012 when he was 10 years old. After feeling tired and experiencing bone pain and headaches for three weeks, he went to the doctor. A requested blood test revealed leukemia cells.

Jennifer

My mother, Jennifer, was diagnosed with breast cancer completely unexpectedly in 2015 and beat it a year later. Soon after, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We were in complete shock. She is single and lives on our Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon with no cancer hospitals, so my sister and I completely dropped our careers and lives in other states to take care of her as we were scared and knew she needed support.

Krystina

On June 13, 2014, my sweet daughter Krystina Sharpe Perry was diagnosed with PH positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Unfortunately, all her chemotherapy treatments didn't seem to work.

After a year of chemotherapy, Krystina and her doctor decided to do a stem cell (umbilical cord blood) transplant. She had the procedure on July 1, 2015 but her body couldn't fight the infections. With a low immune system and three trips to the intensive care unit, her kidneys, lungs and heart just couldn't continue to function.

Joe

My son Joe was 5 years old when he was diagnosed with T-cell leukemia just three days after the birth of his brother Cole – Joe was admitted to the ICU, and on Sunday, the next day, they did a spinal tap and a bone marrow biopsy. At midnight that night, he started his chemotherapy treatments.

In the first 30 days, his bone marrow had cleared to zero, and he was technically designated as a “low risk rapid responder.” All things being equal, he has done a phenomenal job through this.

He is in long-term maintenance and he finished his treatment on December 13, 2014.

Michelle

I'm Michelle, and I'm a childhood cancer survivor. I'm going to be 43 in a few days. I was 2½ when I had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) through age 5, going through it all. I received experimental chemos and radiations. I was two out of 45 children who lived. The rest died. I have relapsed over six or more times ― two leukemias, and the rest were all different cancers. I recently got tested genetically at O.H.S.U., and I have what they call a mutated gene.

Dr. George Yagmour

Jaziel

Hello, my name is Jaziel, and I am a three-time leukemia survivor. My story began in 2008 when I was initially diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). I was treated for a few years and became cancer-free (remission) in 2011. During my first battle with cancer, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) helped me and my family immensely by assisting us with rent, gas, and sometimes simply sharing the stories of other survivors, encouraging me to keep fighting.

Deanna

Within 24 hours of going to the local emergency room in New York, I found myself being admitted to the Dana Farber/Brigham Women's Cancer Center in Boston. It was August of 2013 and I was exhausted beyond anything my four kids could inflict upon me and shocked to find out it wasn't anemia, I had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Ethar

Refugee Family Gives Back to LLS after Daughter Survives Leukemia

Sixteen-year-old Ethar and her family moved to the United States from Iraq in 2015. Just one year later, she was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“It all started when my lymph nodes began to swell and the pain became very intense,” said Ethar. “It was at this point, that I went to the emergency room with my father so we could try to make sense of what was happening to me.”

Lolo

Lolo was a happy and active 10-year-old when she was diagnosed with pediatric acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) in December 2012. She spent the next six months at Children’s Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, isolated from her classmates and critically ill.

Linda

My blood cancer story began in 2015 with a diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). It was scary, and there were so many unknowns. Today it’s 9½ years later, and I know a few more things about blood cancers.

First, today my cancer is undetectable! But as my doctors have told me, it’s chronic, so I’ll always have to be proactive and take medication.

Mayra

I am 28 years old and a mother of two. Last year on December 19, 2024, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive blood cancer. My world was turned upside down as I had no idea what I would be dealing with or if I was going to make it. Cancer is something no one ever wants to hear.

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. 

Anne

My story with leukemia began in July 2016 when I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). It was four months and 13 days after my wedding to my husband Eddie, and one month to the day after our vow renewal ceremony. What we didn’t realize at the time was that my body had likely been fighting for months. I thought my exhaustion was from wedding planning and running my writing business.

Dominic

Our son Dominic was diagnosed with MLL-rearranged acute myeloid leukemia (AML) on July 14, 2020. The mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) gene rearrangement in AML is considered a high-risk feature, and treatment typically involves high-dose chemotherapy to induce remission followed by bone marrow transplantation. The MLL-rearrangement is also called the KMT2A-rearrangement or 11q23 rearrangement. Dominic had a translocation between chromosomes 6 and 11, t (6;11).

Edmund

U.S. veterans’ sacrifices can occur on the battlefield … or much later.

Houseboys sprayed Agent Orange on weeds around the Quonset huts of Edmund Montefusco and his fellow soldiers in Korea in the early 70s, but it was decades before Edmund’s rare, slow-growing hairy cell leukemia made itself known.

Katie

I was diagnosed with Leukemia when I was 20 months old. I endured treatment for a little over 2 years until I was declared cancer free. Since I was diagnosed so young, I do not remember the treatment. However, I do remember the support from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) as my family participated in the LLS’s Light The Night walk every year for the past 18 years!

William

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) holds a special place in my heart. I lost my mother to therapy associated with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in July 2021. AML is a type of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow and blood. It can be very aggressive and progress rapidly without treatment. There are still certain forms of AML that do not have effective treatments, like the one my mother had. LLS was a resource I knew about from my work in solid tumor cancer research. It helped provide me with patient and caregiver resources that I needed at an extremely difficult time in my life.

Shar

For the past nine years as a physician assistant, I have had the privilege of taking care of acute leukemia, high-risk lymphoma and bone marrow transplant patients at the Intermountain Blood and Marrow Transplant Program.  Throughout my years at this job, I have seen the struggles patients and their families face once they’ve been told “you have cancer.” I've enjoyed being an important part of our patients’ medical team, helping them heal physically and emotionally, but I wanted to do more.  

Angela

I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in April 2009. I was so devastated. The first thing that got me through was a friend who had just won his battle with leukemia. I hadn't seen him in about a year, but he popped up all of a sudden that day and gave me hope.

A couple of months later, the oncologist and I agreed I would go into a wait and see period. He said it would likely be 6-10 years before I needed any treatment. I made it almost 6 years. I began treatment in March 2015.

Watch-and-Wait

Some people with MDS who do not have very low blood cell counts or other symptoms may not need to start treatment immediately. Some people can manage their MDS with their doctors for years or even decades using a watch-and-wait (observation) approach. By using the watch-and-wait method, your MDS specialist can monitor your condition with regular physical exams and blood tests. The watch-and-wait approach lets you avoid therapy's side effects until you need treatment. Treating MDS during this early stage has not proved helpful. 

Ph-Positive ALL Therapy

In addition to chemotherapy combinations, children with Philadelphia chromosomepositive (Ph+) ALL and Philadelphia chromosome-like (Ph-like) ALL are also given a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) medication.

Tyrosine kinases are enzymes that are a part of many cell functions including cell signaling, growth and division. These enzymes may become too active in patients with an ALL subtype called Philadelphia chromosome-positive ALL (Ph+ ALL).

Maureen

My warrior daughter with mixed phenotype acute leukemia diagnosed on April 5, 2019 and my hero son, her BMT donor!

Caree

I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) in 2021 last year at the age of 21 years old. Over the year everything happened so fast.