Meet Bianca - Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Bianca is a happy little girl who loves life. She enjoys being outside and will talk to anyone she meets. Her favorite things are princesses. She wants her hair to grow long so she cal lool like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She enjoys riding her bike and playing with her sister. They are best friends.

Towards the end on October 2015 Bianca started showing signs of being sick. The doctor first believed she had the flu, but she was not eating and had a fever for over 8 days straight. I had taken her back to the doctors office several times then a chest x-ray was done to find that Bianca had a quarter stuck in her throat and it needed to be removed. Looking back, she was also showing signs at this time of having leukemia but a blood test was never done. After the quarter was removed Bianca hurt her knee and was complaining of knee pain which was very unusual for her as she is and has always been a very tough little girl. A x-ray was done of her knee and there was nothing there. I was told to just give her medicine for the pain.

About a week later she was screaming in pain and complaining that her elbow was hurt. I decided to take her to the urgent care. During the urgent care visit they did an x-ray of her elbow and again did not find anything wrong. The doctor then felt her arm and elbow to see if there was anything he could feel and there was nothing. He then asked if I minded if Bianca could have her blood drawn for a cbc which I agreed to. We left the urgent care after the blood draw.

About a week later Bianca’s father checked the results online and noticed that her counts were way off. Her pediatrician had us come back in to have repeat blood work done. We did this 3 times over 3 days. Then the pediatrician sent us to a specialist in DC to see Bianca. This is a visit I will never forget. They did more blood work when we got there and the doctor looked at her blood on a slide. I will never forget that moment when the doctor came back into the exam room and told me that my daughter had leukemia. We needed to get her to childrens to begin treatment immediately. On December 5, 2015 she was officially diagnosed with pre b cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The treatments at first were very difficult on all of us. Bianca initially had to be sedated to just go down to the surgical floor to have her spinal taps done. It was very overwheming for her. We are treated at Kaiser and it it very different. The surgical floor is set up for adults, not children. On the plus side to Bianca being treated at Kaiser is that she sees the same doctor and nurses for every visit. This has been our saving grace as they have become like family to us.

Now this is a way of life. Bianca has a routine when she goes to the clinic for treamtents. She handles being accessed like it is nothing. But it was a long road to get her to this point. She even now is able to go down to the surgical floor without being sedated and enjoys talking with the surgical staff before she gets a spinal tap done. She has a favorite nurse on the surgical floor that she will now walk back with to the procedure room all by herself.

She has come a long way and is an amazing strong little girl that I am very blessed to have as a daughter.

Bianca’s support page

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Meet Bianca – Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia