Whitney's Page

Hello. Welcome to Whitney's Page. We will keep you updated with Whitney's progress as we know things. Please feel free to sign her guestbook and leave us messages.

The Littlest Soldiers
by Cheryl Jagannathan
Mother of Robby Putnam, Leukemia SURVIVOR

The medals on our chests
Are broviacs for meds
Helmets won't stay on
Cause no hair is on our heads.

Our weapons of destruction
We take every day
We fight the battle within us
While we struggle on to play.

We fight with honor and courage
No Marine could do as well
We are only children
Living in this hell.

So bring on the medals
The purple hearts of wars
The gold cross, the silver star
To place upon our scars.

For we are the children of cancer
No one has fought so hard
But every day we struggle on
Our LIFE is our REWARD!

Journal

Sunday, March 28, 2004 1:50 PM CST

I know it has been a very long time since I last updated Whitney's web page and I am sorry. We've been very busy lately, as I am still having a lot of behavioral and emotional problems with my oldest daughter Amanda and I have started taking classes again.

Whitney is feeling pretty good, although we did get the news a few weeks ago that her cancer has progressed into her spine. Of course this was terrible news since she'd never had any involvement there before, but it wasn't unexpected because she had been fourteen weeks without any kind of treatment. Between her infection, hospital admission and jumping through hoops with the insurance company to start a new treatment, it had been quite a while since she'd received any chemo. She is now doing a new treatment regimen with oral thalidomide and oral temozolamide at home and she only has to visit the hospital every other week for blood count. So far, she has had very little side effects and her hair is starting to grow back, which she is very excited about! I have not told Whitney about the cancer progression because I want to know if and when she starts having back pain that it is because of the cancer and not because she knows there is cancer there. Does this make any sense? I want to make sure it's a physical pain and not a psychological one.
As far as the clinical trial in Philadelphia. Our oncologist in Boston suggested that we put it on hold because of it's reputation for severely depleting platelets and Whitney is already having problems with low platelets. Since we didn't want to ruin our chances for future treatments, we have decided to start with a clinical trial in Boston. If all goes well with Whitney's current treatment, I think we are planning on going to Boston in late spring for a PZA mini-transplant.

Well I've got to get back to raking our itty-bitty lawn. What a beautiful spring day we've had today!!

Please keep the thoughts and prayers coming for Whitney.
Thanks for visiting Whitney's page.

Karen

Hospital Information:

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center
1 Medical Center Drive
Lebanon, NH 03756
603-650-5541

Email address  : Kamanwhit0173@aol.com