Alex Sohrweide Alex's journey

On March 9, 2017 I took Alex to the doctor because he just didn't seem to be getting better from having influenza and strep. After some tests and blood work, we were told that the prognosis wasn't good.  We heard the word that no parent wants to here, leukemia.  Alex's blood count was so low that they sent an ambulance up from Children's Hospital in Milwaukee to get him.  As we sat in that clinic office waiting for the ambulance to arrive many things were going through our heads.  Alex was asking a lot of questions, he knew what leukemia was but he said " Mom, I will get through this."   The next 3 days were full of many tests and blood and platelet transfusions.  He had a bone marrow aspirate and biopsy done.  After that we did get some good news, it wasn't leukemia.  His diagnosis - Severe Aplastic Anemia.  They said that at some point, his body was fighting off an infection of some sort and after the infection was gone his immunity continued to fight off all his good cells in his body. That in turn made his bone marrow stop producing new cells.  There are two treatments for this, one is immune suppression therapy and the other is a bone marrow transplant.  If there is a sibling match for the bone marrow then they would go right to the transplant, if not then they would try the immune suppression therapy first.  Kayla was not a match so the suppression therapy would the route.  After waiting for what seemed like forever to get more test results back, we finally were able to schedule treatment.