Please make a donation to the Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation this holiday season.
Homecoming queen and top student Briana Donis always wanted to go to the University of Texas at Austin.
“I was having a pretty awesome year. I was very well known at school and I had a boyfriend.” She had just been accepted at the school of her choice when she noticed how really tired she was all the time. And then the bleeding started.
Beginning September 2012, I just wasn’t feeling quite right. I was increasingly fatigued and there were some perplexing bleeding incidents, as well. After many months I experienced partial vision – just little areas of vision that were blank. Internal bleeding in the eyes was causing this, and my eye doctor knew it was serious and even thought it could be leukemia.
Dr Deauna-Limayo received her medical degree at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Southern California and fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Kansas.
In January 2016, my 9 year-old daughter Emma turned yellow. After seeing her regular doctor, we were sent straight to the hospital. They found that her liver enzymes were extremely elevated and sent us to a second hospital. After extensive blood panels and scans, they still couldn’t determine the cause of Emma’s liver inflammation, and so the process to find her a new liver began.
Although it sounds strange, I am beginning to believe that breast cancer possibly has saved my life. In October 2015, I was diagnosed with stage 2 lobular carcinoma of the breast. My cancer was found during my routine mammogram. I opted for a bi-lateral mastectomy and then had 33 radiation treatments in early 2016. I saw my oncologist every month due to my treatment and she ran blood work every time.
My mom is a pharmacist and I currently attend the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, I was shocked and sad but I wasn’t scared.
I was 19 years old when I found out that I had low blood counts. At this time I was just starting college and also working three different jobs. I was having extreme stomach pains and abnormal periods. I went and saw my gynecologist and routine tests showed my low blood counts.
Dr. Ellen Friedman has been the Hematology Fellowship Director of Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine since 2005. She completed a fellowship in hematology at New York University, specializing in the conditions of red cells, platelets and hematologic malignancies. She has been engaged in diagnosing and treating these conditions while simultaneously teaching medical students, medical residents and fellows in the skills and knowledge required.
At the age of 3, I became ill with a rare blood disorder. I was bruising easily, and my platelet count was dangerously low. I was diagnosed to have ITP, had my spleen removed, and thought I was cured. However, my disease was either dormant or morphing into something else. My symptoms recurred with pregnancy, and after my second child was born, my disease was never dormant again.