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Introduction:
Leukemia or the white blood cells cancer are either acute or chronic. Either of these types are divided to lymphocytic or lymphoblastic, myeloid or myeloblastic, hence ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia), CLL (Chronic Lymphoblastic Leukemia), AML (Acute Myeloblastic Leukemia), or CML (Chronic Myeloblastic Leukemia). In leukemias the white blood cells that are in charge of the body immunity and produced in the bone marrow, are not fully developed, abnormal and in produced in great numbers. Therefore the immunity of the inflicted individuals are seriously affected and present with a variety of infections, bleeding, bruises, fever, etc. ALL is most commonly occur in children and is the most common blood cancer in this age group, but the other types of leukemias, AML, CLL and CML are more common in adults. While ALL is the best prognostic of these leukemias, the rest of the three have poorer prognosis, specially AML. The cause of these common blood cancers are not fully known, but inheritance and environmental factors such as radiation in its etiology have been proposed. This is while more than 2 million people worldwide are affected with leukemias with a mortality of more than 350,000 per year.
Sohrab Sepehri, a Persian poet and painter whose a few of his verses and paintings are posted here in between the texts, died at age of 51 from this killing cancer. He was born in a desert town of Iran, Kashan, but loved life and nature like no one else. He excelled more in poetry than painting that was his original art career, though his real life job was a teacher as none of his art work could provide for him and he did not write or paint for living. As you read a few of his poems here, he offered the poetry an imagery quality as if painting the words while versing. His poetry has been translated into many languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish and Russian among others. He is more closer to Rumi, the ancient Persian poet, and his thoughts were more like sophism and Buddhism.
And Shauna is a little girl only 7 years old who at this very moment struggles with leukemia, and under chemotherapy has lost all her hair, wearing wig, her kidneys have been damaged and had to go under dialysis, her liver and nerves have been affected with treatment, and after all she has not cured yet. But she is positive, loves life and animals, specially dogs, cats and the fish in my office aquarium, when she comes in with her mom who is under my care for the treatment of the burden of care of her and her older brother who suffers from autism. Shauna also loves the nature as Sohrab did, and if she survives her killing cancer, perhaps one day she will be a poet, painter or both!
Another Victim of Mutation:
Leukemia like other cancers is another victim of gene mutations. As the nature takes care of itself, there is a “tumor suppressor gene” that over time has evolved in our system like other immune factors such as white blood cells themselves that defend our body against foreign invasions mostly by different microbes. But like in autoimmune disorders that the T-cells and other immune factors attack its own system, specific mutations in the cell divisionary process of white blood cell precursors, i.e. the stem cells, by microbial invasions or radiations is the pathophysiologic process of leukemia development.
Read the full text here:
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