This is my story:

Hey everyone,

I had Neuroblastoma stage 4 when I was 2 years old. Now I'm 24. In the begining I just had a 10% chance of survival. They did surgery first so they could biopsy the tumor and possibly remove it. They could not remove it at that time. Then they started the chemo. I had bone marrow aspirations, bone scans, and cat scans. Also lost my hair. The chemo worked and the tumor had shrunk from a grapefruit size to a golf ball size. Did surgery again and took tumor out. Then I had a bone marrow transplant. It was an autologus transplant. They said I had a 50/50 chance of long term survival. Before it I had 14 days of radition and chemotherapy. They started the transfusion which was hooked to a IV line into my chest. Within seconds I sat up and said , "I don't feel good". I then collapsed and the EKG monitor showed a flat line and I was in a cardiac arrest. Over the next hour a roomful of doctors and nurses tried hard to keep me alive. Later one of these doctors, told my parents they were on their very last drug before calling the code off. The last drug worked and I was stabilized. Now the doctors had to give me the bone marrow I needed to live. Because the bone marrow sat out at room temp. for an hour, alot of the cells died, they also lost alot of the cells when they washed it. only 10% of the cells were left. Then they gave me that amount to see what would happen. So 6 hours after the arrest they tried again. This time everthing went well. Now we just had to wait to see if the small amount of bone marrow would start to work or engraft. Usually it takes about 14 days to start seeing new cells and on the 14th day my blood counts started rising. All of the doctors thought this was a miracle. Over the next few weeks my counts continues to improve. Throughout this 1st month I was in a semi-coma state. Nobody could tell if I could hear, see, or understand. This is probably a good thing because I didn't remember any of it. There are alot of things your body goes through after all that chemo and radition and I was not aware of any of it. On Christmas day I started saying my first words. I asked for a "coke". I came home 2 months after I got there. The doctors never did figure out what caused my cardiac arrest.

Today I am very healthy and cancer-free!!