About Me

My photo
My name is Jeff Flanagan and my daughter, Taylor, is now a 16 yr old Junior at Etowah High in Woodstock, GA. On October 28, 2010 she was diagnosed with AML, a very aggressive form of leukemia. Within 5 days she was started on extensive chemotherapy treatments. We were initially told she was going to have 5 total rounds of chemo, each lasting approximately 10 days and leaving her in the hospital for weeks with every treatment...but, she was the 1st in GA to only have to go through 4 rounds of her type of treatments. She was able to come home on Easter Day of 2011 and has been doing great since! My family and I thank everyone for all the prayers and thoughts over the last year! For more information on AML Leukemia, please see "AML Information" below.

Donation Page

All donations made will go to the Flanagan family to help cover any remaining out of pocket expenses for Taylor's medical bills. If you do not care to go through Paypal, you can also send donations made out to: Jeff & Ashley Flanagan P.O. Box 818 Holly Springs, GA 30142 Any and all donations are greatly appreciated, no amount is too small!

AML Information

"AML Information" - AML (acute myeloid leukemia) is diagnosed in about 20% of children with leukemia and approximately 500 children are diagnosed in the U.S. each year.

Leukemia is cancer of the blood. It develops in the bone marrow, the spongy center of the long bones that produces the three major blood cells: white blood cells fight infection, red blood cells that carry oxygen and platelets that help blood clot and stop bleeding. When a child has leukemia, the bone marrow begins to make white blood cells that do not mature correctly, but continue to reproduce themselves. Normal, healthy cells only reproduce when there is enough space for them to fit. With leukemia, these cells do not respond to the signals to stop and they reproduce, regardless of space available. These abnormal cells reproduce quickly and when they begin to crowd out other healthy cells in the marrow, symptoms of leukemia are experienced.

Symptoms of leukemia usually occur over a short period of days to weeks. Some of the signs and symptoms for AML can be tiredness or no energy, shortness of breath during physical activity, pale skin, swollen gums, slow healing of cuts, pinhead-size red spots under the skin, prolonged bleeding from minor cuts, mild fever, aches in bones, black-and-blue marks (bruises) with no clear issue.

Patients with AML need to start chemotherapy immediately. There are two (2) parts of treatment; induction therapy and consolidation therapy. The aim of induction therapy is to kill as many AML cells as possible and get good blood cell counts back to normal. When the aim of induction therapy is achieved, it is called a remission. Induction therapy is done at the hospital and most patients are there for three to four weeks. Combining drug types can strengthen the effects of the drugs and two or more chemo's are usually used together to treat AML. Most chemo's are given through a catheter placed into a vein, usually in the persons upper chest area. The first round of chemo usually does not get rid of all AML cells and most require more treatment. Usually the same drugs are used for additional rounds of chemo. Consolidation therapy is needed because some AML cells remain that are not found by common blood or marrow tests. Consolidation therapy is also done in the hospital and as with induction therapy, patients may be in the hospital for three to four weeks at a time.







Monday, February 14, 2011

February 14, 2011 - Happy Valentine's Day!

Well Taylor was supposed to go home by today, but experienced a little bit of a setback the end of last week. The doctor came in Thursday morning and said that her counts were going up, and as long as she didn't get any fevers or infections she would be home possibly over the weekend or today at the latest. On Friday morning I get a text from Michelle (Taylor's mom) saying that she had been running a fever of 104 since late Thurs night and all morning Friday. They quickly put her on benadryl and tylenol to try to knock out the fever and began running tests to find out why she had the fever in the first place.


Apparently she caught the strep bug...she didn't have strep throat, just the bug that causes it. They said it was possible that somehow it got into her central line in her chest, who knows how that happened. I stayed with her Friday night and she didn't have a fever all weekend and is still good as of today. Unfortunately with her getting the bug, it cut her white blood cell counts in half so we still have to wait for them to come up before she is able to come home again. She was fortunate to be able to get rid of the bug and fever as quickly as she did because it could have been a whole lot worse than it was. There are many kids that I've heard that get infections and it could take weeks or months to get rid of them...so I guess all the prayers we asked for are definitely working in her favor!

I know she was looking forward to being out, especially by today of all days...but I think her boyfriend Justin is going to go visit her this afternoon, so that will give her something to look forward to for Valentines Day!


Here are some pictures of the notes and cards from Taylor's stay the first round. She truly has some wonderful friends and family looking out for her!





Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)