Learning About Leukemia

During the past six weeks, our extended family has been learning things that nobody ever wants to learn.  On December 1, 2008, my niece’s 7-year-old daughter, Lily, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL).  Today’s adults remember when such a diagnosis was a death sentence; 40 years ago patients with ALL had a four percent survival rate.  Now children with Lily’s type of leukemia have a 90 percent survival rate, because St. Jude’s hospital in Memphis made it their main mission in the 60s to discover treatments that work against childhood leukemia.  Researchers at St. Jude’s were criticized by those who believed that children with cancer should be allowed to die in peace rather than go through the horrible treatment that they had to endure.  Our family and thousands of others are so grateful that the researches prevailed and persevered.