Catherine Judd

Welcome to Catherine's CaringBridge site. We've created it to keep friends and family updated. Catherine is our 22 month old daughter who was diagnosed with AML two weeks after her first birthday. We took Catherine to our local ER one Sunday afternoon due to a fever and a weird swelling in her upper lip, never expecting to not come home that day. The Dr. had labs run which showed a low white count and they immediately sent us by ambulance to children's hospital in Minneapolis, MN. For the next three days they ran test and treated with the "big guns" (antibiotics) for Catherine trying to get her fevers under control.  On Wednesday of that week the team at children's came in to tell us she had Acute Myeloid Leukemia. This would require three to four rounds on chemotherapy and a possibly bone marrow transplant depending on whether she was high or low risk. We lived at children's for the next 33 days getting treatment with chemo and waiting for blood counts to drop and recover. We were able to go home for a few days then had a bone marrow aspiration and spinal tap with IT chemo. These came back clear and Catherine was in remission and we were told she was low risk, so we would just go through four rounds of chemo for Catherine's treatment plan.  We lived at Minneapolis children's hospital during round two for 22 days and round three for 28 days when we came back for our forth and final round of chemo starting with a spinal tap and IT Chemo we were told they found more leukemia cells in her spinal fluid and Catherine was no longer in remission, she had relapsed and would now need a bone marrow transplant at the University of Minnesota. We are currently in the work up week stage at the U of M preparing for Catherine's transplant which is scheduled for Aug. 4th. Catherine's sister Clara will be her bone marrow donor! Thank you again for your help in supporting us through this journey with Catherine.