The holiday season is the time of year when children should be
writing letters to Santa, playing in the snow and remembering to be
nice. But Salena Williams of Smethport, who turned three Nov. 29,
will spend this season beginning her fight against a terrible
disease.
“She was diagnosed with leukemia Dec. 1,” explained her aunt,
Monica Kinner, on Friday.
Jayme Williams, calling from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
where Salena is currently a patient, said it’s been a a very hard
week for the family.
“She just turned three last Tuesday,” Jayme Williams said. “This
was her birthday present, I guess. It was like a shot through the
heart.”
The family had been noticing that the normally high-strung
Salena was napping quite a bit, and then she began having fevers
and was quite pale.
On Wednesday, after Salena woke from a nap, she didn’t move.
“I took her to Bradford Hospital,” Jayme Williams said. The
doctors ran tests, and got some frightening results.
“Her hemoglobin was at three. The doctors said that was a fatal
level,” Williams said. A hematologist was contacted at Children’s
Hospital of Pittsburgh, who said to bring Salena there
immediately.
She was rushed by ambulance to Pittsburgh late Wednesday night,
her mother explained.
“They gave her a chest X-ray when we got here and found out
that, on top of everything else, she has pneumonia,” Williams said.
Salena was given a blood transfusion soon after arrival in
Pittsburgh, and has had two more since.
“Her levels now are at 11.2. She’s stable,” Jayme Williams
said.
Not long after arriving in Pittsburgh, Salena’s mother learned
what was making her daughter so sick.
“The doctor sat me down and said that with her symptoms, she’s
got leukemia,” Williams said. “Her liver swelled. Her spleen
swelled. Her cells and bone marrow – it’s all leukemia.”
Salena had a spinal tap to determine whether the disease had
entered her spinal fluid, and the doctors found some good news.
“She went through that perfectly fine,” her mother said. “There
was no leukemia in her spinal fluid.”
She is undergoing chemotherapy injections to her spine to keep
the disease from spreading there.
“She will have to come back here once a week for four to six
weeks” for chemotherapy, Williams said.
And the best news of all – her doctors believe there’s an 80
percent chance that Salena is curable.
“She’s standard risk for her age,” Williams said. “She’s got a
very high chance for recovering.”
More tests are scheduled for Monday, including a bone marrow
biopsy, another spinal tap and a chest X-ray. If those turn out
good, Salena may be allowed to come home.
Her mother explained the chemotherapy, although just started, is
working already. “I was brushing her hair and three brush-fulls
came out.”
Believe it or not, that’s a good sign, she said.
Salena has been without a fever since Sunday and has been “doing
extremely well.”
She said Salena has been handling things well – for a
three-year-old.
“When she sees the doctors or nurses coming near her, she says
‘don’t hurt me.’ It’s going to take her a very long time to trust
anyone,” Williams said.
“I tell her ‘this stuff is awful, but it’s going to make you
better in the end.'”
Williams explained that she has spoken at length with Salena’s
doctors in Pittsburgh, who have explained to her that Salena’s
chances are good.
She added that Salena’s appetite is coming back and she is
improving. She will continue to be treated for about 2 1/2 years
“until we find out if she’s cured.”
While this has been a terrible ordeal for the family to go
through, it is not the first time that Salena has been a patient at
Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Earlier this year, Salena was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst
on her brain.
“It’s just like a mass filled with bodily fluid,” Williams
explained. “It’s not filled with poison. They’re just watching it
at this point.
“We come down here once a year for MRIs,” she said. That
diagnosis was a result of an accident. “It took a head-dive off the
porch to find that out.
“She’s definitely a fighter.”
Constant trips to Pittsburgh for Salena Williams’s continued
treatment of leukemia are going to be financially hard for her
parents, Nathan and Jayme Williams of Route 46, Smethport.
An account has been set up with Hamlin Bank for donations for
the family to help with expenses related to Salena’s health care
and the family’s needs. Salena will require continued treatment at
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. The trips will be once a week
for four to six weeks, and her ongoing treatment will continue for
more than two years.
Donations can be made at any branch of Hamlin Bank to the
Account for Salena Williams.
