Word: anissa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Anissa Ayala, the leukemia-stricken girl whose parents conceived another child in the hope of providing her with a blood-marrow donor, was a hot subject too. What was the news? Among other things, her family's reaction to the NBC movie For the Love of My Child: The Anissa Ayala Story. "I really enjoyed it," Anissa's mother told reporter Kelly Lange. "I cried through the whole movie...
...medical team then rushed the marrow to a hospital room where Marissa's 19-year-old sister Anissa lay waiting. Through a Hickman catheter inserted in the chest, the doctor began feeding the baby's marrow into Anissa's veins. The marrow needed only to be dripped into the girl's bloodstream. There, like salmon heading home to spawn, the healthy marrow cells began to find their way to the bones...
...Ayala family had launched itself upon a sequence of nervy, life-or-death adventures to arrive at that denouement last week. Anissa's leukemia was diagnosed three years ago. In such cases, the patient usually dies within five years unless she receives a marrow transplant. Abe and Mary Ayala, who own a speedometer-repair business, began a nationwide search for a donor whose marrow would be a close match for Anissa's. The search, surrounded by much poignant publicity, failed...
...Ayalas did not passively accept their daughter's fate. They knew from their doctors that the best hope for Anissa lay in a marrow transplant from a sibling, but the marrow of her only brother, Airon, was incompatible. Her life, it seemed, could depend on a sibling who did not yet exist...
Twelve days before the operation, Anissa began receiving intensive doses of radiation and chemotherapy to kill her diseased bone marrow. As a result, she is losing her hair. Her blood count is plummeting. Her immune system has gone out of business. But in two to four weeks, the new cells should take over and start their work of giving Anissa a new life...