SAVING LIVES 

Steve and Liz Apel thought their 6-year-old son, Cameron, was a superbly wholesome child. He bought sick extra usually than his 4-year-old brother, Harrison, but it surely appeared like that was only a matter of germs circulating by way of his classroom. Then, in February of 2022, they left their house in Slinger to go to Steve’s grandmother up north. “Cameron was coughing each 5 seconds,” Liz remembers. “We instructed him that after we get house, we’re going straight to Kids’s Wisconsin Emergency Division.”

At Kids’s Wisconsin Milwaukee Hospital, blood work revealed that Cameron’s hemoglobin, platelet and neutrophil ranges had been far beneath the place they need to be. He was admitted, and a month handed throughout which Liz and Steve alternated nights and days at his bedside whereas he underwent exams. He was recognized with extreme aplastic anemia, a bone marrow dysfunction that, when untreated, has a really excessive demise price. The Apels had been launched to Dr. David Margolis, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Kids’s since 1992 and one of many nation’s main consultants in bone marrow transplants, who makes a speciality of aplastic anemia. “These first days had been actually painful,” Steve says. “Dr. Margolis and his entire workforce actually took us step-by-step by way of every single day.”

“We’re not caring for a illness – we’re caring for the child and the household,” Dr. Margolis says. “My first means of doing that’s by studying what retains the child within the sport. For some youngsters, it’s sports activities; for some, it’s music and artwork. For Cam, it was racing.”

Steve is a driver at Slinger Tremendous Speedway, and Dr. Margolis discovered that speaking about racing helped get Cameron by way of his hospital keep. He additionally discovered that Cameron’s brother was a bone marrow match and will present a transplant. “I might are available with lists of questions, and Dr. Margolis would spend each second he might to reassure me,” Liz says.

Happily, the transplant, carried out at The MACC Fund Heart for Most cancers and Blood Issues at Kids’s Wisconsin, was successful. Six months later, Cameron continues to be recovering, however he’s doing significantly better – and he’s again in class. “We had been very lucky to have Kids’s in our yard,” Liz says. “We’re grateful to be so near a world-renowned workforce.” “Kids’s offers excellent care,” says Dr. Margolis. “We analysis, we educate and we deal with youngsters and their whole household. And we do this in a means that’s compassionate, complete and cutting-edge.”

• Kids’s Wisconsin is among the nation’s top-ranked pediatric well being programs. They transcend treating youngsters solely when they’re sick or injured and take care of the entire youngster – their bodily, social and psychological well being – by way of nationally ranked medical care, advocacy, main analysis and training.

• Donations help Kids’s capability to offer the very best and most secure care for teenagers. That features caring for the entire youngster by eradicating illness, innovating well being care, empowering households to construct robust communities and creating options for psychological and behavioral well being. Funds assist enhance affected person expertise and help training, analysis and facilities that assist present care to youngsters and households in Wisconsin.

8915 W. CONNELL CT. | 414-266-2000
giving.childrenswi.org

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