Aplastic Anemia

Biting into the Elephant

I believe that a story is the shortest distance between two people. While this is my story, it is not just mine, and I did not do any of this alone. In April 1983, my husband Joe and I were 25 years old and attending to the required pre-marital blood work. Next thing we knew, we were sitting in a doctor’s office because my blood counts were abnormally low. They told us there was something wrong, but they didn’t know what it was.

Clear Communication with Your Provider

Today, limited appointment times, overwhelming and confusing volumes of information available on the Internet, coupled with the stress of having a rare disease diagnosis, might mean patients don't always get the answers they need to make informed decisions about their care. Clear communication can  have a positive impact on patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and self-management.  Improving communication in any relationship is helped by respect for each other and the ability to manage expectations.

Kirk R. Schultz, MD

Institution
British Columbia Children’s Hospital
Physician Status
accepting new patients
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Aplastic Anemia
Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN)
Pediatric
About
Dr. Kirk Schultz is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, BC Children’s Hospital, and the Child and Family research Institute (CFRI) who has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. He is a Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist focused on new therapies and rejection in Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) and immune therapy of blood cancers.Dr. Schultz was the recipient of the CIHR/Wyeth Clinical Research Chair in Transplantation and is past chair of the Pediatric BMT Consortium the largest children’s BMT clinical trials group in the world. He was recently

Daria Babushok, MD, PhD

Institution
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Physician Status
accepting new patients
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Aplastic Anemia
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN)
Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria (PNH)
About
Daria Babushok’s research is focused on understanding the genetic changes that can arise in the bone marrow of patients with aplastic anemia, and on how they affect the patients’ prognosis and treatment outcomes. Dr. Babushok has completed a clinical hematology-oncology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently a junior physician-scientist investigator at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Dr. Monica Bessler. In a study recently published in the journal of Cancer Genetics and conducted with the support of the AA&MDS International

Aplastic Anemia Patient Meets Physician Who Treated Her 30 Years Ago

For so long, I have been quietly racking up the years - 33 in all - since my diagnosis and transplant. I have done so well and had so few problems that I felt I had nothing to share. But as the years have gone by, I have begun to realize how few of us long-term survivors there are and how truly blessed I am to just be alive! By reading the comments when I post a milestone birthday, I am overwhelmed with the response from others who have walked this path, who are just beginning the journey, or are fearful for their loved one’s future.

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