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Annabelle fought this cancer for two and a half years with various chemo treatments, and she won! She stayed in remission for three years, and all seemed well. Unfortunately, after noticing some unusual bruising again, Annabelle and her family feared the worst and took her to get checked out. Although the first set of results gave them great hope, a follow up visit showed that she again had Leukemia, although this time it was Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a very aggressive form of blood cancer.

Annabelle finished her first round of chemo and is doing incredibly well. She and her mother will remain at the hospital because her risk of infection is too great. Annabelle’s fight will continue, but we will be fighting with her!

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perfectly healthy with no heart defects, which is pretty uncommon for a child with Ds. At 14 months old, Zulily paid for Annabelle and her family to fly to Seattle to model for them. While traveling, Annabelle’s mother, Sophie, noticed small signs of bruises and night sweats, which didn’t alarm her too much. However, upon returning, they noticed little purple dots under her skin, called petechiae. At this point, Annabelle’s parents started to worry since children with Down syndrome are 10x more likely to develop leukemia.

Sophie took Annabelle to an after-hours pediatric urgent care, where the doctor only diagnosed her with hand foot and mouth. Sophie insisted they do a CBC until the doctor reluctantly obliged. She was told it would be days before they got the results back. However, less than an hour later at 11:30pm they got a call from the nurse telling them to go to the ER without delay. Her blood count was dangerously low. They were transported to another hospital two hours away where Annabelle was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and where they would stay for the next 30 days.

We are inspired by Sophie’s words, “Annabelle’s prognosis is poor but our God is great. Annabelle isn’t a statistic. You can’t put a percent chance on a life when you have God on your side. Only He knows what will happen and only He can heal her completely. We just pray that His plan is to keep her here with us for many, many more years to come.”

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