Phin the Phighter: Acute Myeloid Leukemia

My name is Emily and I'm helping my amazing friends, the Michael family, fundraise for their son, Phin. If you have any questions about this fundraiser or want to help in other ways please reach out to teamphin4{at}gmail.com

From the family:

"Phin has leukemia.

The diagnosis is "acute myeloid leukemia," or AML. It is not the kind of leukemia we were hoping for when they told us he had leukemia. Our doctor told us that about 500 kids are diagnosed with AML in the U.S. each year. Two of them are at this hospital right now--Phin and a kid a year younger than him.

Phin completed his tenth and final day of his first round of chemo, aka Induction One. During Induction One, he received chemo through his cvc line every twelve hours for ten straight days, and he took it like a champ. The game now is to rest, recover, report, and most importantly, reduce the risk of infection.

It’s a hard point to make in a world exhausted from a pandemic, but for immunocompromised cancer patients like Phin who’ve just emerged from chemotherapy, the primary danger isn’t dying from cancer; it’s dying from some crappy little bug that one of us unknowingly brings home and carries to him. Covid, of course, yes, but also normal stuff like strep throat or stomach flu could be lethal to him. To help diminish that risk, Phin now advances into a four- to six-week period of inpatient monitoring and recovery, after which, if he’s doing well and his counts are up, he might be allowed to leave the hospital for a few days. The doctors remind us that every patient’s treatment is different, but if Phin’s goes well, he’ll go from ten days of chemo into 4-6 weeks of monitoring in the hospital, and then he might get a week or a week and a half at home. Then he’ll come back to the hospital for ten days of chemo, a month and a half of 24/7 monitoring in the hospital, a week or so at home, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat–if everything goes exactly right."

Money from this fundraiser will go towards medical costs and a whole house HVAC filtration system so that Phin can safely visit home.