As a Pharm D student, I came across a case of 1 year old child diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia(ALL) came to hospital for re-induction chemotherapy.
This case showed me how hard it is to take care of a child with leukemia and the problems that come with treating a baby. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is a condition which affect the body in different ways. primarily the disease attacks the bone marrow which results in weakening of the child’s immune system and the child becomes vulnerable to infections. Chemotherapy was given to this 1 year old child patient before and was currently receiving re-induction therapy. It demonstrates the difficulties in treating a child with repeated episodes of a disease like leukemia. Besides that, it also highlighted the importance of carefully monitoring chemotherapy during treatment for recurring cancer.
The most interesting thing I took away from this experience was how important clinical pharmacists are in identifying drug interactions, monitoring for side effects of medication therapy, and preventing inappropriate procurement/distribution of chemotherapy drugs to patients recieving them.
In life-threatening conditions like ALL, are we focusing only on treating the disease or equally on protecting the patient from the treatment itself?
MBH/PS