Original Email with details

Family and Friends - Some of you have heard the bad news, but most have not - I wanted to let you all know that yesterday Hillary was diagnosed with AML - Acute Myeloid Leukemia. It happened very quickly - she got blood drawn Wed afternoon and it came back with with unusual blood counts. She was taken to Stanford Hospital about 2am Thursday, the diagnosis was confirmed Thursday afternoon and they started Chemotherapy soon after that. Often it isn't known why someone gets AML.

As some of you know, she went to a Dr last Friday and was diagnosed with Mono. On Tuesday of this week she had another few symptoms, went back to another Dr and said she had looked all the symptoms up on-line on Wikipedia and was a little concerned of Leukemia - the Dr said he really didn't think she had Leukemia, but they took blood and we were called back Thursday night after the blood work showed abnormal cell counts. Her current Dr's couldn't remember anyone ever diagnosing themselves with Leukemia - a testament to how resourceful Hillary is and it helped getting herself into the hospital and treated earlier than it could have been.

As many of you know, though Leukemia is very serious it is also curable. We are all in good spirits and realize that it's out of our hands, we just have to hope the treatment works. There are several things we have in our favor. We're at Stanford - probably the best place Hillary could be for Leukemia with excellent doctors, which is extremely comforting. Also, the fact that she is young and in good health will help in her fighting the disease and recovery. Hillary looks very good, and is having an amazingly positive attitude.

She will be in the hospital for the next month. As for the process, she had a bone marrow biopsy yesterday that confirmed the diagnosis and she will get Chemo for 4 days, then 7 days after that they will do another bone marrow biopsy to see how she reacted to the Chemo. This means we really won't know how her body is responding to the Chemo for 11 days from now. Once we find out those results we'll know more about the next steps.

We all know that Hillary will fight through this and will come out even stonger.

Unfortunately she isn't allowed to have any flowers in her room. Anything sent to her can be sent to our house and I can bring it to her....I'll also check to see if she will be in the same room for the next month, and if so I'll send the room number. I won't be on email that often the next few days, so I won't be able to respond to things quickly.

I'll try to update if we get any new news, but I think we just have to wait, hope and pray for Hillary.

love to all - Chris