Chapter 51 Section 1

Annie felt death for the first time when she was 14 years old.A neighbor girl suffered from a mysterious incurable disease, and died a few weeks later.Anne and the girl are not very familiar, they know each other because they went to the same middle school.For a time, neighbors, classmates, everyone seemed to be talking about this matter.Some say that the disease comes as soon as it is said, and it is impossible to prevent it.Some said that there is absolutely no cure for the disease, and anyone who catches it will die.Some say that even the doctors and specialists don't know what the cause of the disease is or where it comes from.The name of that terminal disease is leukemia, also called blood cancer.

Twenty-one years later, in 1971, Anne had become Mrs. Anderson, the mother of three children.The word "leukemia" she heard again was the doctor's diagnosis of her son's condition. Jimmy Anderson is the youngest son of Annie and Joels.That January, he and his older siblings fell ill at the same time, with the same cold symptoms: cough, runny nose, low-grade fever.A few days later, the two older children were mostly recovered, but three-year-old Jimmy never got better.His face was pale, several purple blood spots appeared on his body, his appetite became worse and worse, and his physical strength became worse and worse, until he had to stay in bed all day long.Anne and Joels took the baby to Dr. Donald McLean at the local hospital.

Jimmy's situation made Dr. McLean very disturbed.Paleness, purpura, and constant low-grade fever are all clinical symptoms of blood lesions.Dr. McLean suspected leukemia, but he did not dare to tell the Andersons what he thought, because leukemia is very rare, and the annual incidence rate among children is less than 4/100,000.It was a Saturday, and Dr. McLean still arranged for the laboratory to test Jimmy's blood that afternoon. "It will be clear when the results come in," he said to Anne and Joels. "Call me after four o'clock." When Joels Anderson called the doctor as he said, Dr. McLean's voice was extremely heavy: "I'm afraid there is something wrong with your son's blood. We still need more experiments to make a conclusion." Still no words Mention leukemia.Dr. McLean said he had made an appointment for Jimmy Anderson with Dr. John Truman, chief of the Children's Hematology Division at Massachusetts General Hospital, two days later on Monday morning.

Massachusetts General Hospital is the largest hospital in the Boston area.Director Truman performed a bone marrow aspiration test for Jimmy Anderson, and found that the proportion of blast cells was as high as 32%.This type of white blood cell divides and multiplies extremely quickly, but before it can fully develop and mature, it begins to wither and shrink.There was no doubt that Jimmy had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Anne Anderson sat with her husband that afternoon in Director Truman's office.She remembered that it was extremely cold that day, and the sunlight obliquely coming in from the window pane was particularly glaring.When she heard the word "leukemia" that terrified her, Annie felt her heart constricted suddenly. After that, everything around her seemed to cease to exist, only the dust floating in the sun could not be seen before her eyes. Stop flying and spinning.Director Truman's voice became very distant, as if slowly coming from the depths of space.

Director Truman said that the next four weeks were critical, and he would administer a combination of drugs and chemotherapy to Jimmy.There is a good chance of getting better, but there is also a 10% chance of accidents.The biggest danger is not leukemia itself, but any possible infection, because chemotherapy will greatly reduce the body's immunity while killing cancer cells in the blood and bone marrow.Any little illness, even a very mild cold, can be fatal. Director Truman said that when he began his work in the early 1960s, childhood leukemia was a completely incurable disease, and young patients generally died within weeks of diagnosis.In the last two years, there have been breakthroughs in the treatment of leukemia.This combination of drugs and chemicals, also known as the St. Yoder Method, was developed at St. Yoder's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.If Jimmy Anderson can successfully pass this one-month course of treatment, the probability of his survival in the next five years will be higher than 50%.

As for the cause, Director Truman said frankly that he was not very clear.Some researchers found that nuclear radiation and certain chemicals, such as benzene, caused acute myeloid leukemia, but that was not the case with Jimmy.Because it has been confirmed that leukemia in some animals, such as cats, cows, and birds, is caused by viruses, some researchers are also trying to find out the connection between human leukemia and viruses. The Anderson family lives in a small town called Woburn, about 12 miles north of Boston, with a population of 36,000.Woburn has historically been known for its tanning of leather, and owned more than 20 leather factories before and after the American Civil War in the 1860s.After World War II, most tanneries closed down due to fierce competition from foreign counterparts.By the end of the 1960s, only the J. J. Riller factory on the west bank of the Apodrone River in the east of the city was still producing leather.In order to attract more investment, the relevant authorities of Woburn City planned to develop an open space between the east bank of the Apodrowna River in the northeast of the city and Highway 93, and named it "Industrial Park".In the area of ​​more than 50 hectares, in addition to several small manufacturing factories, there is also a new food machinery factory built by the United First Garment Factory and the multinational company W.R. Glass.

The Andersons moved to Woburn in 1965.Before that, they lived in a small apartment in Boston.Anne's childhood friend, Car Gray, and her husband bought a house in Woburn, which they liked not far from Boston, but where they could enjoy the fields, forests and rivers that should belong to the country.The Andersons, after a few visits to the Grays' house, decided that Woburn was an ideal place for them to call home. The house Annie and Joels chose was near the Pine Street community in the southeast of the city, where the Apodrone River became wider.When Jimmy Anderson returned to Woburn from Massachusetts General Hospital in February of that year after he lost his hair, neighbors came to visit with all kinds of sympathy.A woman told Anne that on Grieg Street where she lived, there were two families whose children also suffered from leukemia.One of the sons of the Nagol family recovered well after the chemotherapy, but the other boy, Mike of the Zona family, was always sick.