Unstoppable Testimonies

Hello! I’m Abril, I’m 11 years old and since I was a little girl I’m an UNSTOPPABLE

At just four months, I started to have some mucus. I was becoming more and more congested and my my parents started to get nervous and took me to the emergency room. We were initially told that it was “a poorly healed cold”, but it turned out to be Congenital acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

On 23 May 2011, I was taken by ambulance to the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona. They hooked me up to a bunch of machines and took me directly to a small room isolated from the world. I still remember the injections! That night my parents received the news that I only had a 10% chance of pulling through. But they did not let that affect them and they gathered strength from where there was none. We had a long road ahead of us.

Four days in the ICU and the pre-chemotherapy treatment worked. We were facing six months of chemotherapy. Once this treatment was completed, we would still have to keep on fighting. The disease was gone, but the leukaemia was so aggressive that I needed a bone marrow transplant. My parents were not compatible with me. We had to turn to the Josep Carreras Foundation so they could look for an umbilical cord or bone marrow that was as compatible as possible with me. It seemed that they had found some cords that might be suitable, but they were dismissed because they were not good enough for me.

But, in the end, they found an ideal bone marrow, from a donor in the United States. It was good news accompanied, once again, by a tough and very long period. I was in the Vall d’Hebron Hospital, in a tiny isolation chamber that would be my home for two months. It was a very tough trip.

Finally the day arrived on which my new bone marrow began to sprout strongly and the doctors decided that I could leave the chamber. But the journey had not yet reached its end. There were hard months of isolation at home ahead of me, and with continuous visits to the hospital. We even had some major scares that made me spend a few more days in the ICU. Thank goodness it all turned out to be just a big scare.

After such a struggle, my new bone marrow began to work and, little by little, I began discovering the world outside.

But I couldn’t all be that that easy. The disease once again fouled my blood and I had to give up everything I enjoyed. We once again needed to clean my blood. This time, the magic came from Philadelphia. A clinical trial became my hope, the CART-S. The cells that entered my blood were programmed to destroy all the B-lymphocytes to make sure that my blood remained completely clean.

But I must say that leukaemia has not stopped me. The journey has been very tough, but it has helped us all to grow up and appreciate every little thing in life.

Abril