Team Tara's Cancer Warriors
Donation protected
Tara has committed her life to helping and caring for so many others as a registered nurse and now needs our support to help her through the toughest battle of her life. Read her story below as she faces so many adversities in her battle against a rare type of Leukemia which has resulted in delayed necessary treatment. Facing financial hardship with impending job loss due to ongoing treatment including the delayed bone marrow transplant, any and all donations are greatly appreciated no matter how large of small.
Read Tara's Story:
I usually am not one to share too much personal information, and I am a pretty private person in general. However, at this time I feel like all the extra positi...ve thoughts and prayers might do me good. And many people have been telling me I Should make some kind of post. I will warn you now, this story will be long.
Somewhere near the end of August last year I started to have pretty severe headaches, then I had fatigue and some achiness. Being a typical bad nurse when it comes to our own health, I brushed them all off as just being tired and that I’d be fine. Then I started to have unexplained bruises all over. Finally September 1st, everyone had convinced me to go get checked out. So I drove myself to Gettysburg ER and they drew about 20 vials of blood. Within the hour the Doctor came in with a diagnosis. He said my white blood cells were 365 thousand and my INR was greater than 10 and that I had a significant amount of blast cells in my blood. I was told I had leukemia and that they were going to stabilize my clotting the best they could and that I would be transported down to Johns Hopkins for treatment.
When I got to The specialized leukemia unit at
Hopkins that night I was told that I would have to stay in the hospital for the next month receiving intense chemotherapy. I was devastated, I had never been away from my kids for a day at most. I was diagnosed with mixed phenotype acute leukemia or MPAL. Meaning that I have both ALL and AML leukemia. This is rare and difficult to treat. Over the next month I received weekly chemo and lumbar punctures with chemo into my spine. By the end of September I was discharged home to my mother in laws house in Baltimore because my home in PA is too far away from the hospital. I have multiple follow up appts every week and need to be able to get back to the hospital quickly if I would get a fever or infection. I am unable to work or drive, and I cannot be alone. Luckily my Mom is retired and has been a wonderful support to me driving me too and from my appts most of the week. I had a bone marrow biopsy done at the end of September and it showed no presence of leukemia. Everyone was thrilled! I then started a 42 day cycle of outpatient chemo in October and November. However by the end of November I had developed leukemia cutis skin lesions and another bone marrow biopsy confirmed that the leukemia had come back. I was then admitted back in the hospital for an even stronger round of chemo called clag-m. A week after being discharged from that I was back in the hospital again with fevers, having a blood infection. I was sent home January 2nd and for the last month have been waiting for my blood counts to recover. I’ve had to receive so much donor blood and platelets to remain stable.
Unfortunately about a week ago as my counts began to recover, blast cells also showed up in my Blood. Another bone marrow biopsy on Wednesday confirmed that the leukemia was still there. Another issue on Wednesday is that I had developed another fever and tested positive for the flu. So here I sit in the hospital again as I type this.
Monday I am supposed to have another lumbar puncture to check for leukemia in my cerebral spinal fluid. If that is still clear, than I will be eligible to get into a clinical trial specifically for my particular disease trying to test the safety of these 3 drugs given together. These are not chemo, something different all together. There is hope that these drugs will decrease the amount of leukemia in my bone marrow so that I can receive a bone marrow transplant. I cannot receive this transplant until the leukemia is less than 5 % in my marrow. I already have a donor lined up, it’s my brother Chris, and he is a full match for me. It is our hope that his bone marrow will cure me and reset my own bone marrow from creating these leukemia cells.
So I guess my point in typing all this out and putting this information about myself out there is any positive thoughts and prayers you can think for me would be appreciated, and if you have read all of this so far, thank you! My kids are 8 and 3 and I am not ready to leave this world yet. I am trying to be strong and positive but it’s difficult when so little has gone my way. I have a really good feeling about this clinical trial though so again I appreciate those thoughts and prayers.
Read Tara's Story:
I usually am not one to share too much personal information, and I am a pretty private person in general. However, at this time I feel like all the extra positi...ve thoughts and prayers might do me good. And many people have been telling me I Should make some kind of post. I will warn you now, this story will be long.
Somewhere near the end of August last year I started to have pretty severe headaches, then I had fatigue and some achiness. Being a typical bad nurse when it comes to our own health, I brushed them all off as just being tired and that I’d be fine. Then I started to have unexplained bruises all over. Finally September 1st, everyone had convinced me to go get checked out. So I drove myself to Gettysburg ER and they drew about 20 vials of blood. Within the hour the Doctor came in with a diagnosis. He said my white blood cells were 365 thousand and my INR was greater than 10 and that I had a significant amount of blast cells in my blood. I was told I had leukemia and that they were going to stabilize my clotting the best they could and that I would be transported down to Johns Hopkins for treatment.
When I got to The specialized leukemia unit at
Hopkins that night I was told that I would have to stay in the hospital for the next month receiving intense chemotherapy. I was devastated, I had never been away from my kids for a day at most. I was diagnosed with mixed phenotype acute leukemia or MPAL. Meaning that I have both ALL and AML leukemia. This is rare and difficult to treat. Over the next month I received weekly chemo and lumbar punctures with chemo into my spine. By the end of September I was discharged home to my mother in laws house in Baltimore because my home in PA is too far away from the hospital. I have multiple follow up appts every week and need to be able to get back to the hospital quickly if I would get a fever or infection. I am unable to work or drive, and I cannot be alone. Luckily my Mom is retired and has been a wonderful support to me driving me too and from my appts most of the week. I had a bone marrow biopsy done at the end of September and it showed no presence of leukemia. Everyone was thrilled! I then started a 42 day cycle of outpatient chemo in October and November. However by the end of November I had developed leukemia cutis skin lesions and another bone marrow biopsy confirmed that the leukemia had come back. I was then admitted back in the hospital for an even stronger round of chemo called clag-m. A week after being discharged from that I was back in the hospital again with fevers, having a blood infection. I was sent home January 2nd and for the last month have been waiting for my blood counts to recover. I’ve had to receive so much donor blood and platelets to remain stable.
Unfortunately about a week ago as my counts began to recover, blast cells also showed up in my Blood. Another bone marrow biopsy on Wednesday confirmed that the leukemia was still there. Another issue on Wednesday is that I had developed another fever and tested positive for the flu. So here I sit in the hospital again as I type this.
Monday I am supposed to have another lumbar puncture to check for leukemia in my cerebral spinal fluid. If that is still clear, than I will be eligible to get into a clinical trial specifically for my particular disease trying to test the safety of these 3 drugs given together. These are not chemo, something different all together. There is hope that these drugs will decrease the amount of leukemia in my bone marrow so that I can receive a bone marrow transplant. I cannot receive this transplant until the leukemia is less than 5 % in my marrow. I already have a donor lined up, it’s my brother Chris, and he is a full match for me. It is our hope that his bone marrow will cure me and reset my own bone marrow from creating these leukemia cells.
So I guess my point in typing all this out and putting this information about myself out there is any positive thoughts and prayers you can think for me would be appreciated, and if you have read all of this so far, thank you! My kids are 8 and 3 and I am not ready to leave this world yet. I am trying to be strong and positive but it’s difficult when so little has gone my way. I have a really good feeling about this clinical trial though so again I appreciate those thoughts and prayers.
Organizer and beneficiary
Kimberly Smith
Organizer
Union Bridge, MD
Tara Colacioppo
Beneficiary