As we are all mostly familiar with, cancer is abnormal cell growth. There are hundreds of kinds of cancer and generally, kids get different kinds than adults. Unfortunately, cancers that happen to kids tend to occur in developing cells like the bone marrow, blood, kidneys and tissues forming the nervous system, whereas adult cancers happen more in organs such as the lungs or breasts. Treatments are chemotherapy – which is “systemic” or affects the entire body through the blood stream, and radiation – which is “localized” or directly placed on parts of the body such as tumors.
Leukemia- Cancer of the blood or blood-forming tissue. Leukemias are the most common type of childhood cancer. Types include:
- Acute lymphoblastic (or lymphocyctic) leukemia – known as ALL – which accounts for 75% of all leukemias. This was the first part of Skeeter’s dx.
- Acute non-lymphocytic leukemia, including myelogenous leukemia (AML) which accounts for 15-20% of all leukemias. Chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML) accounts for less than 5% of all leukemias and there are other even more rare ones in kids.
Information above from “Know Before You Go: The Childhood Cancer Journey” Handbook
As I stated up there – Skeeter had what the nurses call the “good” kind of leukemia – ALL. ALL is pretty good for treatment these days and the outlook is not that bad. This is just the first level of classifications though. They do genetic screening to check chromosomes and also visual screening of biopsied bone marrow to come up with a long diagnosis.
More officially his diagnoses is Early pre-B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with TEL-AML1 fusion..
There are two lines of leukemia cell in ALL: B cells and T cells. 80-85% of all ALL children have B-lineage with one or more of the common antigens (which are proteins on the surface of the cells). The different levels of the maturity of the B cell lineage tells the doctors how the treat the leukemia. Early pre-B is the most common – 3/4 of children with ALL have this lineage and this is the best prognosis of all the different types of ALL. The TEL-AML1 fusion is a movement of the TEL gene on chromosome 12 to the AML1 gene on chromosome 21 and children with this translocation usually have a favorable outcome.
There is so much that can been seen on a microscopic level these days and that has really helped the survival rate soar.
