Key points from today’s guests:

Whitney Mayer, acute myeloid leukemia survivor

• In 2018, while 27 weeks pregnant, Whitney went in for routine blood work. Doctors first thought she was anemic, but further testing found she had acute myeloid leukemia – a rare blood cancer that typically affects older adults.
• At age 32, she started chemotherapy immediately at The University of Kansas Cancer Center, where the team of specialists could treat her in this unique case since she was pregnant.
• She later found out she needed a bone marrow transplant, and discovered a match with her brother, Shane.
• Whitney gave birth to a healthy baby Titan at 32 weeks and then underwent the bone marrow transplant.
• Today, she and her four children are happy and healthy and she credits her faith, her family, the community, and the team at the Cancer Center for all of the support.
• She reminds people to not take things for granted and to live life to its fullest.

Dr. Marc Parrish, maternal fetal medicine specialist, The University of Kansas Health System

• With chemotherapy treatment for Whitney, we took into consideration the health of the baby and we closely monitored the baby’s health throughout treatment.
• We also had the capability here if we needed it to perform a fetal blood transfusion. Very few places can do that. Luckily, that was not needed.
• We are fortunate to have a wonderful acute leukemia team with multiple physicians at the University of Kansas Health System.
• We coordinate very closely and discuss cases together in a multidisciplinary way to make collective decisions regarding how we approach those patients.
• In Whitney’s room we had everything set up in the just like it would be in a labor and delivery suite. We also had the neonatology team involved just in case baby Titan did come early.
• We had a C section kit in the event that something really went wrong, and also had everything that we needed for a normal, natural birth as well, ready to go.

Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub, oncologist and hematologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• Leukemia is a word that means a cancer of the white blood cells and it is one of the highest risk diagnoses.
• It's a diagnosis in which the immature cells of the bone marrow stop working. It does require intensive, multidisciplinary treatment that goes on for months and the only way to live with leukemia is to live without it.
• The general approach is to start with an aggressive treatment – an aggressive chemotherapy combination -- which has evolved over the years. We have different drugs and the treatments continue to evolve.
• Whitney’s situation was very unique and I vividly remember the call I had to make to her in 2018. It was the hardest call I’ve ever had to make.
• We didn’t just have one patient, we had a mother and a child. So we needed to provide the maximum protection for the mother and the baby.
• I think it's wonderful that Whitney had a great outcome. That took a lot of hard work from Whitney, a lot of dedication from her family and caregivers, and it took extraordinary amount of coordination and work by a lot of physicians and team members here.
• Sign up to save a life at NMDP.org.

Monday, Oct. 21 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. It's also among the deadliest of cancers because it's caught late stage. Learn if you qualify for a low-dose CT screening and how to get one.

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