Support Aleeah’s Fight Against Leukemia
Story
Aleeah is the little girl who plays volleyball, cheers, goes to school dances and just loves being with her friends and family. On April 29, 2025, she went to her normal 14 year check up at the pediatricians office. She mentioned her bad headaches and the doctor did bloodwork. We received the results the next morning, just letting us know that her cell lines were low and we’d need to repeat them in a week or two.
On Saturday, May 10th, she went in and got more bloodwork. At 8:30 that night, her doctor called me to tell me that her cell lines were dangerously low and she needed to go right to the ER. We went to Augusta Health within an hour and got transferred to UVA Children’s Hospital, where she has been inpatient since.
That Monday, she went into the OR for a bone marrow biopsy. Tuesday, she received her first blood transfusion because her cell lines were still dropping, except this time, it was her platelets too. At this point, we were told that her bone marrow has completely shut down. A few hours later, the pediatric oncology and hematology doctor came into her room and told us that they received the results and she had Acute Myeloid Leukemia. She began her journey with chemo on Friday, May 16. She will be inpatient for every cycle, lasting 30 days at a time. We will find out over the next couple weeks if she will need a stem-cell transplant.
Her doctor recommended that she meet with a fertility doctor to discuss what her future may look like or if she would need to harvest her eggs now. The fertility doctor let her know that if she needs a stem-cell transplant, she would need to begin the process to freeze her eggs at that time. If she does not, then she would likely need to freeze them in her late teens or early twenties.
Any funds raised will go directly to Aleeah to provide anything she needs during her hospital stay, any family expenses from losing hours at work, food, travel and any unpaid medical cost. We have been told that the fertility treatments would be 100% out of pocket as her insurance wouldn’t cover any of it.
Please just keep this beautiful, strong girl in your thoughts and prayers as she fights this battle. Thank you for any donations and for taking the time to read Aleeah’s story.
Update 5/25:
Last Friday, Aleeah had an LP procedure to check for cancer in her spinal fluid, to look and see if it has reached her central nervous system (brain and spine). While doing the procedure they injected her spine with chemo which made her very sick. Some weight was lifted today when the doctor told me her results. It was negative!! There is no CNS involvement. No leukemia cells were found in her spinal fluid. This can lead to be a better prognosis and it would complicate treatment. Now we are waiting for her subtype, which comes back this week and to know if she needs a bone marrow transplant. Tomorrow is her last day of chemo in this induction cycle and she will have another bone marrow biopsy in a couple more weeks.
Update 5/28/25
Thank you to everyone who has kept Leah in their prayers. It means so much to have so many people supporting her. We got a lot of results back today and had a meeting with her doctor. I don’t know how to word much of this… Unfortunately she has Monocytic AML with KMT2A Rearrangement. This is high risk leukemia, it’s very aggressive and rare. She has Trisomy 8 as a secondary abnormality which can complicate the profile and in some cases it has improved the profile. Because she has the KMT2A mutation, she does need a stem cell transplant. She will be sent to another state for her transplant at a different Children’s Hospital. She will go for this in about 2/3 months when her chemo cycles are over. She has another bone marrow biopsy in 2 weeks to see if the first cycle kicked its butt. She is so resilient and pulling through. The days are exhausting her and some days are worse than others. She’s trying to stay strong and get through this.
Update 5/29/25:
She had a rough night. She got an infection in her blood, which we have now learned is strep. She developed sepsis and it turned into warm septic shock. They couldn’t get her blood pressure up so she was transferred to the PICU. They have been intervening every way possible. She is on oxygen, fluid has built up in her lungs, she received a third platelet transfusion this morning, they have gave her all kinds of different fluids and medications. They are using two antibiotics to fight the infection faster and said she is very lucky as this is a bad and serious infection. We caught this almost immediately. ICU is trying to make her as comfortable as possible since her entire body is in pain. They are watching her organs closely. They told her to focus on sleeping today but she is awake and questioning what her nurses do, which is a good sign but they said she is very sick. She is stable, her blood pressure has finally come up as of a few hours ago, and her fever recently went down. She is a fighter.
Update 5/30/25:
This is not a post I thought I’d ever have to make. Aleeah’s blood infection is very serious. With the chemo doing its job, her immune system is compromised, which we knew would happen and she was on antibiotics everyday, they also watched closely for a fever to start. Yesterday afternoon she took a turn for the worst and she is as sick as she can get. They had to ventilate her to help her breathe and after doing so, she went into cardiac arrest. They brought her back with compressions and then her heart stopped again. The only way to save her was to do emergency open heart surgery right in her ICU room. When they were gathering the equipment to bring the OR to her, her heart stopped again. My sweet baby is now on life support and dialysis. The ECMO machine is doing the job of her heart and lungs to allow her body to rest. The dialysis machine is doing the job of the kidney because they have had to give her tons of fluids so her kidney and liver are injured. We have had a lot of ups and downs during this process and a lot of adjustments are still being made to try and keep her stable. She really is a little fighter and she is hanging in there. Once we fight the infection and get all the injuries under control they can start to slowly withdraw from all interventions. Thank you to everyone following her journey. Your prayers and donations would mean more now than ever I will be out of work until I can gather some hours when she is out of ICU, and will be out of work when I have to travel with her for her transplant.
Organizers :
Brittney Lambert is organizing this fundraiser.