September is Leukemia Awareness Month
September is National Leukemia Awareness Month. Although Leukemia typically is slow-growing, signs you can look for are: fatigue, weight loss, frequent infections, bleeding and easy bruising.
I am lucky to be among the long term leukemia survivors. Fortunately, there was a successful treatment for my type of leukemia, hairy cell leukemia.
Hairy cell leukemia is a rare, slow-growing cancer of the blood in which your bone marrow makes too many B cells (lymphocytes), a type of white blood cell that fights infection. These excess B cells are abnormal and look "hairy" under a microscope. The 5-year event-free survival rate after treatment is approximately 90 percent of patients initially treated with cladribine. The advent of cladribine therapy has resulted in approximately an 85 percent rate of complete remission and approximately 10 percent rate of partial response.
Stargazer Oriental Lily, Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland USA IMG 5284
Canon PowerShot G11 Camera
Photograph by Roy Kelley
Roy and Dolores Kelley Photographs
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