During the Maintenance Phase, Anya's doctors will continue give her a spinal tap once every three months to inject chemo medication directly into her spine. Thankfully, the doctors have never found leukemia blasts in her central nervous system but they give her this "intrathecal chemotherapy" to prevent it from developing/spreading there.
My understanding is that recent research has shown that without this preventative therapy, some patients later develop leukemia in their CNS which is more difficult to treat. Early in Anya's treatment, the doctors explained to us that each of us has a protective barrier between our body and our CNS. If the leukemia can break through this barrier, they find the conditions there good for growth and multiply quickly. Therefore the doctors choose to be "better safe, than sorry".
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2 comments:
Is the pepcid helping Anya?
It seems like she is doing a little better!
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