The unimaginable pain of losing a family member to leukemia

Leukemia also known as blood cancer affects blood-forming tissues including bone-marrow and the lymphatic system. It occurs when the bone-marrow rapidly produce white blood cells that are not able to fight infection.

Leukemia is indeed a mysterious disease that even the scientists are unable to understand the exact causes of this ailment. What they can say about this terminal disease is the factors that can increase the risk of one contracting it. Factors such as exposure to certain chemicals such as benzene found in gasoline, previous cancer treatment and genetic disorders.

There are four types of Leukemia. They are: acute lymphocytic leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is the most common type of slow-growing leukemia, and chronic myelogenous leukemia which mostly affects adults. 

Many patients with slow-growing types of leukemia don’t have symptoms compared to those with rapid-growing types of leukemia whose symptoms are fatigue, weight loss and easy bleeding.

Well, some may ask if leukemia is treatable. The fact about leukemia’s treatment is that it depends on severity and it is highly variable. For slow-growing leukemia, treatment may include monitoring. For aggressive leukemia, treatment includes chemotherapy that is sometimes followed by radiation and stem-cell transplant.

I have come to live with the truth of leukemia when I saw how it terminated my eight-year- old cousin after it put not only her but the whole family through unimaginable pain as we had to witness her spend most of last year in hospital.

The hardest part was when she needed a bone-marrow donor but none of us seemed to match her.