Giavanna is happy and into styling and fashion. She loves performing and singing and dancing. She has a great imagination, loves dress up and just be Gia.
Gia was bruising and we didn’t know why….took her to her pediatrician and they drew labs and immediately sent us to Children’s as Gia was in bone marrow failure.At four years old, Gia was diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia. While Aplastic Anemia isn’t cancer, it is a very rare blood disorder. They present themselves similar in the body and treatments happen on the cancer floor.
Her body was not creating the necessary blood and platelets. She became transfusion dependent, needing platelets at least 2 times a week and blood every 10 days. We made the decision to go straight to transplant as Gia was so severely neutropenic, our doctor was afraid she could die from an exposed infection. We found a donor in Germany and we spent 58 days in the hospital waiting for transplant and keeping Gia safe.
Gia went through a week of conditioning chemo to prepare her body for a bone marrow transplant, which happened on Aug. 22, 2017 at children’s hospital of Wisconsin. She has a PICC line right now, runs fluids 18-hours a day. She is on 8 different medications daily. She had a bone marrow biopsy and had to have her PICC line replaced once due to it leaking.
She’s had countless books and platelet transfusions. Countless blood draws. She’s had respiratory therapy due to viruses while in the hospital. Spent 58 consecutive days in the HOT unit at children’s due to the upcoming transplant and how severely neutropenia she was.
She is now post transplant and doing as well as can be expected! Her immune system is severely compromised, but her platelets and blood are within a low normal range now and we are no longer transfusion dependent.
This diagnosis has brought us closer. We are more faithful and more thankful. We also are homebodys for the next year, so it can be isolating while her immune system builds back up.
Hope session by Dilly Bar Photography | Facebook | Instagram