Life or death: Girl in need of stem cell match

Milton Canadian Champion

Anne Hodgkinson and Paul Herron are living every parents worst nightmare. Again.

When their daughter Katie Herron, now four years old, battled cancer as a toddler, the fight for the little girls health was a private, family affair. The youngster endured many months of cancer treatment and battled her way back to a healthy recovery.

That all changed last November.

The Cambridge family doesnt worry about privacy anymore. Theyre now telling everyone they know Katies acute lymphoblastic leukemia is back. Katies life depends on it.

Although the type of cancer that has taken hold of her body usually has a high success rate of responding to treatment, the girl is among the small percentage of children who cant beat the leukemia using standard treatment protocols.

Katies only life-saving option now is to find a stem cell donor match.

Weve got to find a match and weve go to find it soon, explained an emotionally-raw Hodgkinson, as she paced the hallways of Hamiltons McMaster Childrens Hospital, where Katie has lived since the fall.

We have to find a match. She is fighting for her life.

Its hoped a stem cell match would help reboot Katies blood by essentially wiping out her white blood cells and replacing them with a matched transplant of healthy white blood cells. The procedure would enable her body to fight for itself.

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Life or death: Girl in need of stem cell match