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Essay about Reseach on Leukemia

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“LEUKEMIA” CANCER OF THE BLOOD

INTRODUCTION
“You have to realize that every well person is a miracle, it takes billions of cells to make up a person, and it will only take one cell to be bad to destroy the whole person”, this quote is from Barbara Bush from one of her past interviews about a daughter she lost with leukemia (Cunningham, 1988). This quote reminded me five years ago, when my niece was diagnosed with leukemia. She does not only have one bad cell inside her body but she has extra 330,000 counts of white blood cells that are not normal. It was summer of year 2008 when my niece who is freshmen in high school was diagnosed with leukemia or cancer of the blood. Leukemia is a cancer that starts in the tissue that forms blood and…show more content…
This type of leukemia affects the myeloid cells and usually gets worse slowly. This type of leukemia occurs frequently in adults in their 50’s and is rarely seen in children. CML is also classified into three district phases, the chronic phase, accelerated phase and the blast crisis. Knowing the CML phase plays a large part in determining the type of treatment a patient will receive (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, 2012). Each phase describes the CML’s progression which determined by the number of blast cells. * Chronic Phase, this phase is made up of patients with fewer than five percent blast in their blood and bone marrow samples (The Survivors Club Staff, 2012). During this phase, the white cells can still fight infection. Patients in this phase have a very mild symptoms or not noticeable. In most cases, long term drug therapy can control this phase. * Accelerated Phase, in this phase, the patients have more than five percent but less than thirty percent blast in their blood and bone marrow samples. Most patients within the accelerated phase suffer from loss of appetite and weight loss and do not respond as well as to traditional treatments. * Blast Crisis Phase or Acute Blast Phase, in this phase the patients has more than thirty percent blast cells and the cancer has spread from the bone marrow to other organs (The Survivor’s
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