My 4 1/2 year old daughter was diagnosed with ALL on 9/30/91. We are worried about some of the same things you are. We did get a copy of a paper concerning learning
disabilities in children with leukemia. The gist of it was that yes there is a
slight problem on the order of one standard deviation or less on the standardized tests. I will get you the reference.
We also went through a very tramatic episode in Sept 1992. My daughter got a case of
septis (blood infection) and went into respiratory arrest twice. This occurred
shortly after checking into the hospital and the start of antibiotics. The theory
was that the antibiotics clobbered the bacteria, which then died wholesale releasing
all of their toxins at once. My daughter's fever rose from 102 to 105 in half an
hour. They had to sound a Code Blue for her. I thought that she had died in my arms.
I felt her hands and feet go cold.
She was in the ICU for three days and when she came out she was totally unresponsive.
I was far worse emotionally than the inital leukemia diagnoses a year ago. My wife
and I thought that her mind was totally gone. She even forgot how to eat and
intravenous food was necessary. It went on like this for a week.
She is on the mend now and I think that most people would see her as a normal 4 year
old girl. In the past three months we have been to a neurologist, psychologist and
a set of speech and occupational therapists as well as her regular oncologist. She
resumed preschool in Oct. and seem to be doing fine, although she has lost the sight
in one eye. The retina specialist cannot pin down exactly when the sight was lost,
but I am convinced that it is a result of this episode since the intra cranial pressure was abnormally high and presumed to put pressure on the back of the eyeball
which was why we had the vision examined.
After all this I see almost a complete recovery to the point where we were in August.
I do think that my daughter needs some extra work to stay with the other kids in her
class. She is working on writing her name now, something that other kids in her class
can do. Nonetheless I think that she is a testimonial to the strength of kids and
