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    Leukemia
    Leukemia
    Leukemia
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    Leukemia

    By Melissa Abramovitz

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Leukemia, also known as A.L.L., is the most common cancer in children, adolescents, and young adults younger than 20 years old. It applies to several diseases of the blood-forming tissues, encountered in both sexes and at all ages. This book explains the different types of leukemia and what is currently known about the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for each. With full-color photographs and illustrations, this book offers the latest statistics along with information on new treatments, drugs, and future research.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRosen Publishing
    Release dateAug 20, 2010
    ISBN9781420505429
    Leukemia
    Author

    Melissa Abramovitz

    Melissa Abramovitz lives in Roseville, California, and writes nonfiction books for all age groups. She is the author of hundreds of magazine articles, more than 40 educational books for children and teenagers, numerous poems and short stories, and several children’s picture books. She has a degree in psychology from the University of California San Diego and is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature. Visit her online at www.melissaabramovitz.com.

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      Book preview

      Leukemia - Melissa Abramovitz

      Foreword

      Introduction

      A Dreaded and Frightening Disease

      Chapter 1

      What Is Leukemia?

      Chapter 2

      What Causes Leukemia?

      Chapter 3

      How Is Leukemia Treated?

      Chapter 4

      Living with Leukemia

      Chapter 5

      The Future of Leukemia

      Notes

      Glossary

      Organizations to Contact

      For More Information

      Index

      Picture Credits

      About the Author

      © 2010 Gale, Cengage Learning

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material.

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Abramovitz, Melissa, 1954-Leukemia / by Melissa Abramovitz.

      p. cm.-- (Diseases & disorders)

      Originally published: 2003.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-4205-0286-2 (hardcover)

      1. Leukemia--Popular works. I. Title.

      RC643.A274 2010 616.9’419--dc22

      2010004329

      Lucent Books 27500 Drake Rd.

       Farmington Hills, MI 48331

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4205-0286-2

      ISBN-10: 1-4205-0286-7

      Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14 13 12 11 10

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Introduction

      A Dreaded and Frightening Disease

      Chapter 1

      What Is Leukemia?

      Chapter 2

      What Causes Leukemia?

      Chapter 3

      How Is Leukemia Treated?

      Chapter 4

      Living with Leukemia

      Chapter 5

      The Future of Leukemia

      Notes

      Glossary

      Organizations to Contact

      For More Information

      Index

      Picture Credits

      About the Author

      FOREWORD

      The Most Difficult Puzzles Ever Devised

      Charles Best, one of the pioneers in the search for a cure for diabetes, once explained what it is about medical research that intrigued him so. It’s not just the gratification of knowing one is helping people, he confided, although that probably is a more heroic and selfless motivation. Those feelings may enter in, but truly, what I find best is the feeling of going toe to toe with nature, of trying to solve the most difficult puzzles ever devised. The answers are there somewhere, those keys that will solve the puzzle and make the patient well. But how will those keys be found?

      Since the dawn of civilization, nothing has so puzzled people— and often frightened them, as well—as the onset of illness in a body or mind that had seemed healthy before. A seizure, the inability of a heart to pump, the sudden deterioration of muscle tone in a small child—being unable to reverse such conditions or even to understand why they occur was unspeakably frustrating to healers. Even before there were names for such conditions, even before they were understood at all, each was a reminder of how complex the human body was, and how vulnerable.

      While our grappling with understanding diseases has been frustrating at times, it has also provided some of humankind’s most heroic accomplishments. Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery in 1928 of a mold that could be turned into penicillin has resulted in the saving of untold millions of lives. The isolation of the enzyme insulin has reversed what was once a death sentence for anyone with diabetes. There have been great strides in combating conditions for which there is not yet a cure, too. Medicines can help AIDS patients live longer, diagnostic tools such as mammography and ultrasounds can help doctors find tumors while they are treatable, and laser surgery techniques have made the most intricate, minute operations routine.

      This toe-to-toe competition with diseases and disorders is even more remarkable when seen in a historical continuum. An astonishing amount of progress has been made in a very short time. Just two hundred years ago, the existence of germs as a cause of some diseases was unknown. In fact, it was less than 150 years ago that a British surgeon named Joseph Lister had difficulty persuading his fellow doctors that washing their hands before delivering a baby might increase the chances of a healthy delivery (especially if they had just attended to a diseased patient)!

      Each book in Lucent’s Diseases and Disorders series explores a disease or disorder and the knowledge that has been accumulated (or discarded) by doctors through the years. Each book also examines the tools used for pinpointing a diagnosis, as well as the various means that are used to treat or cure a disease. Finally, new ideas are presented—techniques or medicines that may be on the horizon.

      Frustration and disappointment are still part of medicine, for not every disease or condition can be cured or prevented. But the limitations of knowledge are being pushed outward constantly; the most difficult puzzles ever devised are finding challengers every day.

      INTRODUCTION

      A Dreaded and Frightening Disease

      The word leukemia strikes fear in the hearts and minds of those who encounter it. Beverly, a mother whose little boy developed the disease, remembers the panic and shock she felt on hearing the diagnosis: I felt like a bomb had exploded in me. I had so many complicated feelings, and I was very scared. ¹

      One of the reasons leukemia frightens people so much is that it is a type of cancer that takes many lives and causes a lot of suffering despite dramatic advances in medical science during the past several decades. Cancer is a word that disturbs us. It carries an image of a deadly invader; it is chilling because it can mean a death sentence,² writes S.K. Kaura in his book, A Family Doctor’s Guide to Understanding and Preventing Cancer.

      Leukemia is the most common cancer among children. Each year, over four thousand children in the United States alone are diagnosed with this disease, and it is considered to be one of the leading causes of death among children under age fifteen.

      Leukemia also affects many adults; the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society estimates that there were nearly forty-five thousand new cases and nearly twenty-two thousand deaths in 2009 in the United States. For unknown reasons, the disease strikes more Caucasians and Hispanics and fewer American Indians and Alaska natives than people of other races, and it affects more males than females. About 56 percent of leukemia patients are boys and men.

      Anyone, Anytime, Anyplace

      Even armed with these statistics, doctors say it is virtually impossible to predict who will get leukemia. Leukemia can attack healthy individuals with frightening suddenness and speed, as twelve-year-old Marquita discovered. She says, When the doctor called my mom and told her he thought I had leukemia all I could do was cry. ... I never thought this could happen to me, but I found out that it could happen to anyone at any age.³

      When former Dallas Cowboys football coach Tom Landry was diagnosed with leukemia at age seventy-four, the news was shocking and frightening for fans as well as for Landry and his family. Journalist Jim Atkinson writes, Some wondered how an old man could come down with a cancer widely thought to strike mostly children; others couldn’t understand how someone who appeared to be so healthy could suddenly have a life-threatening condition.⁴

      Modern Medicine Offers Hope

      Despite leukemia’s reputation as a merciless and unpredictable invader, modern medicine has made great progress in diagnosing, treating, and even curing the disease in many cases. As recently as the 1960s, some forms of leukemia were inevitably fatal within a few short weeks, but today the overall survival rate has tripled, making leukemia therapy one of the greatest success stories in the treatment of all types of cancer.

      For children with the disease, the cure rate for the most common form of childhood leukemia is now over 80 percent. But the battle is far from over, for leukemia continues to take many lives, and treatment for the disease is painful, risky, and often

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