Melissa was diagnosed this year on January 20th with Leukemia, at the Emergency Room, but was later described as having High Risk Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Melissa donated blood at her school’s campus before and in January it would be her second time and she was super excited since she would be earning a chord for her graduation gear. She completed the donation on a Wednesday and by Friday she got a call to immediately for to the ER because they were worried her labs came back with cancerous levels. Symptoms were not noticeable and the only one she could think of was being extremely tired, but she shrugged it off since she was working a lot. But once getting information on other mild symptoms she checked off a lot of them.
She has gone through 3 rounds of harsh chemo with every cycle being around a month in-patient. However since she was considered high risk, her only option for cure was a bone marrow transplant. Thankfully her brother was a perfect match and we have had a lot of ups and downs but we’re happy that we are together as a family finally. But we have faced a lot of difficulties with me and Melissa having to give up our jobs losing a source of income and the distance to the hospital being large so gas has always been our issue.
We were separated for months at a time but we have all been so much closer, closer than ever we don’t want to miss a single second and we all love to have fun, especially with the new addition to our family, my first granddaughter, Mila.
Hope session by Jo Rae Mi Photography | Facebook | Instagram