On July 12th of 2000 Jordan Pickering went in for her 18 month check up. A few days later symptoms started to appear. She began bruising on her legs and her lymph nodes were swollen. Jordan and her family were back in the pediatrician’s offi ce one week later, on the 19th of July, 95% certain she had Leukemia.

 

Jordan’s family had no time to prepare and no resources on how to handle the emotions that ran through their minds. There was plenty of time to think about the worst and how to prevent that from happening. By 10:30 pm the Pickerings received the news they feared - it was Leukemia. Starting immediately, nurses, residents and students were poking and examining their baby. After the 5th attempt of trying to fi nd a vein to start her IV enough was enough. They did not want to hear about how fi ne her veins are, they just wanted the poking and crying to come to a halt. They wanted their baby back to normal.

 

The next day Jordan was having a bone marrow aspiration and a spinal tap. They can still remember the look on the doctor’s face as he was attempting to get the bone marrow out of Jordan’s hip. Her marrow was thick and white. At the time, they did not know that your bone marrow is very similar to the way your blood should fl ow when you get a cut.

 

Jordan started an extreme regimen of chemotherapy in the attempt to get her in remission. This was to last four weeks or less. For weeks Jordan was at the oncology clinic daily. By week four she still was not in remission. That week they also received news that the chromosome types of the leukemia cells were crossed. That is what put her into an extremely high risk phase. Doctors started using more powerful chemotherapy drugs for the next two weeks. The Pickering family finally received good news; Jordan was in remission. However, no family was a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant. Her treatments continued daily for the next 46 weeks. By February of 2003, 2-1/2 years after her diagnosis, her treatment
was completed.

 

In July of 2004, after being off chemotherapy for 18 months, Jordan’s chance of relapsing in the spinal fluid was less than 2 percent.

 

 On July 15, 2004 the unthinkable happened, she relapsed. Jordan once again started her chemotherapy treatments. Jordan has once again won her battle.

 

On August 9th, Jordan celebrated her 4th year of remission. Jordan and her family continue to fi ght the fight and will ultimately win this battle.