Help Milo through Bone Marrow Transplant ♥️

Hello my name is Karen and my husband is Samuel. We are parents to three beautiful boys and this is a long post but we hope you will read it. This is our oldest son, Emilio or as he likes to call himself Milo, at the young age of 6 he was impacted by COVID-19 and we had no idea how it would alter his whole world and our families. In the end of August he was diagnosed at first with Leukemia but after some tests it proved to be a rare illness known as Aplastic Anemia which is Severe in his case. Severe Aplastic Anemia unfortunately is not just anemia it is a rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood cells as a result of bone marrow damage. As a result he is needing blood transfusions as well as platelet transfusions twice a week at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. The best way to help him is a bone marrow transplant which we recently discovered Leonardo our youngest will be his donor. Transplant will begin on December 3rd at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital-San Francisco which will be about a 3 month stay if all goes well. This has definitely caused an unforeseen financial impact on us and if you can donate anything helps. If you can’t please just share and keep us in your prayers. Thank you. ♥️

Just some extra information to help other families and people understand the seriousness of this illness. Milo has always been a healthy and very active boy when he started to become very tired, bruising easily, and becoming very pale which raised some flags so we decided to take him to his pediatrician. From that day forward our life has not been the same. We were sent to the emergency room immediately and he had multiple labs done and the doctor came in almost immediately that we needed to be transported as they could not treat him; that’s when our world shattered he said his blood counts indicated Leukemia. We were then rushed to a specialized pediatric hospital, 2 hours away from our home, where they began doing even more labs, a bone biopsy, a spinal tap, as well as his first round of chemotherapy to prevent the cancer from spreading. His numbers definitely indicated Leukemia but the doctors were perplexed when they discovered he had a much more rarer disease, Severe Aplastic Anemia. The doctors believe, but can’t confirm as it is new that, COVID-19 could be what triggered it. This is a life threatening condition that even with a bone marrow transplant there are complications and the other route is immunosuppressive therapy which is just as harsh and life threatening. Please just share at the least and allow others to learn about this rare illness that can potentially be impacting children due to COVID-19 (pending more research please contact UC DAVIS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL (HEMATOLOGY/ ONCOLOGY UNIT), DR. PAWAR, if your child has been diagnosed with this disease since the start of COVID-19).