“Elliot Preddie isn’t your average 12-year-old boy.
‘He just couldn’t enjoy life as a kid,’ said his mom, Tremesha.
Elliot was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disease which leads to blockages that prevent blood from reaching parts of the body.
We first met Elliot last year at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.
‘Because of sickle cell, Elliot was always a kid who struggled with energy level and stamina and he got dehydrated very easily,’ his mom said.
He was getting a stem cell transplant from a matching donor.
‘When I was younger, I played sports a lot, but then I got too cold from my sickle cell. That’s why I started quitting all my sports. My baseball and soccer,’ Elliot said as he sat on his back porch next to his family.
One year later, Elliot is now free of sickle cell disease.
‘I’m really thankful that things are getting back to some sense of normalcy for all of us,’ said Elliot’s father, Terry.
Elliot’s doctor said he will continue to be monitored.
‘Now it’s at a point where he’s really just coming in for monthly checks with our stem cell transplant team,’ said Dr. Seethal Jacob, the sickle cell program director at Riley.
Jacob said the challenge was finding matching bone marrow and matching blood donors.
‘Elliott was on chronic blood transfusions every month before he went to transplant and he really needed blood that matched him well enough so that he would not react to it,’ said Jacob”
View the whole story here: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/health/indianapolis-boy-cured-of-sickle-cell-disease-after-stem-cell-transplant/531-2dbfe316-afd9-4ba5-a404-380687a15db0