Friday, December 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

CHILDHOOD LEUKEMIA: Blood drive to help sick girl

8-year-old's family searching for bone marrow donor, too

Chrissy Nelson, 8, has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. Her family is encouraging potential donors to be tested to see whether they're a match for Chrissy. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Chrissy Nelson wasn't even 8 years old when she had to face the fact that she might die soon.

Now, after a whirlwind year in which she seemingly beat cancer, got a trip to Disneyworld from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, entered the third grade and celebrated her eighth birthday, she again is facing that possibility.

The cancer returned.

It all began one Thursday afternoon in January when Chrissy's mom, Ronni, noticed that her daughter looked awfully pale and was more tired than she should have been. Then Chrissy started vomiting.

Ronni took Chrissy to a pediatrician, who took some blood for testing and sent her home. Then, late that night, Chrissy began vomiting again. They went to the emergency room at Sunrise Children's Hospital.

"Basically, we spent most of the next six months in the hospital," Ronni said Thursday morning in an interview at the family's Henderson home.

The doctors diagnosed Chrissy with leukemia. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, but it is still rare. In 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, only five cases of childhood leukemia were reported in all of Clark County, according to the state Health Division.

Leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow that produces defective white blood cells.

Chrissy began chemotherapy the day after her diagnosis. Chemotherapy basically kills blood cells, the good ones and the bad ones. It's the only way to be sure the leukemia is gone from the body.

The patient gets regular doses of blood and blood products during treatment.

For Chrissy, it seemed that the treatment worked. Two weeks after she started, there was no detectable sign of leukemia in her body, her mom said.

Then, a week before Thanksgiving, Chrissy was looking pale again, and again she was more tired than she should have been. Tests confirmed what her parents feared: The leukemia was back.

"Why my baby?" Ronni thought.

"But you can't sit there and think about it like that," she said. "It's not good for the children. You just dig in and fight."

That brings the Nelson family to where it is now, asking the public to donate blood at a drive this weekend sponsored by United Blood Services.

Those wishing to help even more can be tested to see whether they're a match for Chrissy's bone marrow. No one in her family is a close enough match. A bone marrow transplant might be her only hope of conquering her disease.

"The more people who come out to donate blood and see if they are a bone marrow match for little Chrissy, the greater her chances for survival," said Dan Perlstein, a spokesman for United Blood Services.

For her part, Chrissy said she's a little intimidated by all the attention.

"It's scary," she said when asked about the television news cameras and newspaper reporters who have visited her home.

She said at least one positive thing has come of all this: She already knows what she wants to be when she grows up.

"When I grow up, I want to be an oncologist doctor," she said.

Why?

"To help other kids that have things like me, cancer and other bad things that keep them in the hospital. Just help them get better."

The blood drive will be from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Ocean Street LDS Chapel, near Water Street in Henderson.