Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Tuesday, November 6, 2012
(MITCHELL) - The Hub Restaurant, located on U.S. 60 between McDonald’s and Spring Mill State park, will host a benefit for Andrew Terrell on Saturday November 24th.
Andrew, a Mitchell Junior High School sixth-grader was diagnosed with leukemia on October 6th. He is son of Zach and Lindsey Terrell, and is currently undergoing treatment at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.
Andrew was not feeling well following a spinal tap and bone marrow procedure Monday.
All those that attend the benefit are asked to wear something orange. Orange is the color for Leukemia awareness.
A portion of the restaurants sales will go directly to Andrew and his family to help with costs associated with Andrew's treatment.
According to Andrew's Story on Facebook : "Andrew is not in remission which was expected. However, the doctors are fairly happy with what they saw in the smear of his bone marrow.
There were only about 15% leukemia cells. So, this means that he has been responding to the Chemotherapy treatments but, he just isn't quite where they want him to be yet.
They will be moving him into the next phase of therapy from Induction to Consolidation.
They will be introducing 3 new Chemotherapy drugs over the next few weeks. The first one will start Tuesday morning. It will be given over an hour intravenously once a day for 5 days. They will keep him for a couple of days to make sure he doesn't have a reaction since this is the first time he will be getting this particular medicine.
However, his treatments are designed to be outpatient as long as all goes well. So, that just means that we will be making almost daily trips to Riley.
Right now, he is sleeping and is not hooked up to anything. They discontinued his antibiotics altogether since they have his infections taken care of.
They are also going to be stopping the steroid that he takes by mouth which will in turn hopefully mean he will no longer have to take blood pressure medicine after a couple of weeks.
For now, they are just going to continue to use his PICC line but, they may reconsider a new port in the coming weeks if everything goes okay.
They will re-check his bone marrow in 4 weeks to ensure that he is responding to this round of chemotherapy. They will actually lay out a schedule for us for the next three years at this point.
Of course, if there are any complications or if he does not respond for some reason, they will re-evaluate.
Regardless, they will take a look at the plan each time they check his bone marrow to make sure he is still on the course they want him to be on.
So, the bottom line is - shy of remission, this is really the best that we could hope for. As I mentioned before, the doctors were actually pretty happy with this - they were expecting to see more leukemia cells in his bone marrow based on what they are seeing from his peripheral blood smears.
As always, Zach and I thank you all for your prayers and support. There are not words to express how thankful we are for such a wonderful group of family, friends, co-workers, and community. Thank you so very, very much!"
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