Andrew Eyssens

Hi my name is Jessica: Andrew's mom. I created this site so everyone could keep up to date. Andrew has been diagnosed with severe Aplastic Anemia May 2005. Andrew had his first bone marrow transplant on November 28, 2006 from an unrelated donor. Andrew received his Angel Wings October 30, 2007. I thank you all for your support and prayers.

How it all began it was a hot summer and it was to first summer at our new house we had moved in January 1, 2003. It was now August and we were getting settled into the house so that summer I bought two new mattresses for Andrew's bunkbeds. Andrew had just turn 9 that summer and every morning he looked puffy but it would go away shortly after he got up. I figured he was having a reaction to the new mattresses. As a few weeks went by I noticed he was staying puffy longer. So I called the doctor and booked an appointment. Once the doctor saw him he immediately requested a urine sample. He told us Andrew has Kidney Nephortic Syndrome and to go home and start Steroids immediately and he would be in touch with us tomorrow. He also had mention Andrew may need to be in hospital for a couple of days. So we went home. It was the first week of school you know when school started the last week of August. Well the next day was Friday I was at work and Chad called saying the doc called Andrew needed to be admitted to the Children's Hospital right away. I left work and away we went. They ran all kinds of tests and I all I remember is they kept saying something is wrong with his blood work he has very little platelets. The Doctors thought the two were connected low counts and the kidneys. So they monitored Andrew while they treated the kidneys. As the months went by his counts got lower and lower. So they finally decided to do a bone marrow biopsy in August of 2004 and still no answers. We just waited to here anything but in the meantime Andrew kidneys seem to get better with treatment. So here we were a year later and no answers and we continued like this for almost another year. Finally in May of 2005 they order another bone marrow biopsy and this time they told us. It was Aplastic Anemia and they needed to run more tests on Andrew's kidneys to make sure everything was okay before we started to treat the Aplastic Anemia.

We were all in shock what Aplastic Anemia what is that?? We had no idea what Andrew was up against. I was told to look up Aplastic Anemia on line to find out more about it. I googled Aplastic Anemia and I was in shock to find out my son had this really rare bone marrow disease and it could be fatal.