Mariah was a normal healthy child, going to pre-school, playing at the beach, and the park, and getting used to being the best big sister in the whole wide world. Then her world, and ours came crashing down around all of us on November 15th, 2000. She was diagnosed with having Leukemia (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). She was only age 4 1/2 years old.

We were given an 85%-90% chance of survival for her. She spent 30 days at The Children's Hospital in Boston, and had relatively no problems. She went into remission on Dec 15th 2000.

She still had a long road ahead of her as the treatment would last 2 years, however the outlook was defineatly good. She went through her first year of treatment with no major setbacks or problems, aside from once when she was readmitted for a high fever.

All of that changed the day after Thanksgiving 2001. She went to the clinic for a regular appointment, and the doctor found a 1% level of blast cells (Leukemia bad cells). By the following week she had a 33% blast cell level, and our little girl had relapsed. She now went from having a great prognosis to having a fractional one.

Mariah then spent 2 1/2 months continously in the hospital, trying to get back into remission. We were then given the news that she needed a bone marrow transplant. Finally a miracle came when we found out her 2 1/2 year old brother is a perfect match. Then the horrible reality came; they are unable to get her into remission so that she can have the transplant.

We have had three attempts at trying to get her into remission, and Mariah is now trying her last chance with chemotherepy in Houston. If this doesn't work the doctors told us that all they will be able to do is to give her some quality of life for as long as her body can hold out. They figure that this will be between two weeks, to maybe two months at most.

Mariah needs a miracle and massive amount of praying. With the Lords will she will survive all of this, and hopefully we can be a 'normal' family again, and she can go back to school.