leukemia

My friend in whose honor I ran the Disney Marathon for Team in Training is in the 4th stage of graft-versus-host disease, which is a result of the stem cell transplant she received in January. She found out last July that she was sick, and she's managed to fight so many small battles along the way with chemotherapy, its side effects, finding a donor, going through the transplant, etc-- not to mention the fact that she was in the hospital through all three hurricanes that slammed into Orlando. Each time she got through a particularly difficult bout of treatment, she would always send out an email letting everyone know she was okay. She had to go to a different city for the transplant, so she's not as close by.

I hadn't heard from her in a few weeks, which worried me, but the last I'd heard she was doing better and might even be moving out of the hospital. That was three weeks ago. Now I've learned she's having major complications with this graft-versus-host disease, where from what I can gather the skin and then the liver are attacked because resistance is down. It doesn't sound good.

I'm not even going to try to express my feelings about this because it's just very sad-- there's not much I can say.