Marissa
Shaffer
Marissa Shaffer is a Leukemia survivor and she is 10 years old. She
was born in Santa Cruz
on Thanksgiving Day. When she was 2 ¾ she started to get sick. She
was tired a lot of the time, and anemic, and
she didn't want to go on walks anymore. A blood test showed that she
didn't have enough red blood cells. The doctors diagnosed Transient Erythropenia of Childhood (TEC), a condition
where the body stops producing red blood cells, and then
spontaneously starts. Marissa had to have a blood transfusion. After
a week, more blood tests showed that the condition had not changed.
Another blood transfusion, and a second
visit to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Stanford for a bone
marrow aspiration gave a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia on
September 18th 2001.
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Marissa
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