Three-year-old Chayanne Parboo of St Monica in the Upper Pomeroon was a healthy, joyful and playful child before being hospitalized on December 8 last year.
The little girl is now in urgent need of platelets to be able to conduct a bone marrow test to diagnosis her condition.
The girl’s parents said that her platelet count is 6,000 and she needs about 50,000 minimum to do the test. A person’s normal platelet count is between 150,000 to 450,000.
Platelets are tiny blood cells that help your body form clots to stop bleeding.
Doctors suspect the little girl has leukemia but have been unable to diagnose her because of her low platelet count.
Her father, 36-year-old Omesh Parboo, said his only daughter contracted a high fever three weeks prior to her being hospitalized.
The father of three explained that doctors had first suspected malaria, but after his daughter began passing blood in her urine and her fever never stopped, they took her to a private doctor who said she may have leukemia.
“We take her to a few doctors and they didn’t find nothing; normal thing they give her, -panadol syrup and amoxicillin. Until a private doctor did a blood test on her and he noticed something wrong in her blood works.
“Her white blood cells were like five times above the normal blood count and her platelets low; they suspected its leukemia from day one but they could not pronounce on it,” the father said.
In September last year, the little girl started her nursery education at Hampton Court Nursery school on the Essequibo Coast.
“This is her first term in nursery school; because we live in the Pomeroon we tried to get the best for her and put her in school on the coast,” the father said.
It has been five weeks since Chayanne has been a patient at the children’s ward at the Georgetown Public Hospital and her blood platelets count keeps dropping.
“Right now with her low platelets count she could actually bleed out from a simple injection or a cut, or if it’s too low she can bleed from her kidneys too because the kidneys filter your blood and to do the test to find out if its leukemia; they need her platelets to be 50,000 and hers at present is 6000,” the father explained.
“We are trying to get people to donate and let it reach 50,000 to get a biopsy or bone marrow test for her.”
The family is also asking anyone with information that can assist their little girl to share.
“This is not something rare; children and even adults diagnosing with leukemia now.
“Cancer in the whole is not something to take light; it is something very serious and it could pop up anytime,” Parboo said.
The child’s mother, Verney Charles, is fearful of a serious diagnosis.
“She was this kind of healthy person and for me today I still don’t believe its leukemia and I just praying for miracle so she can recover,” Charles said.
The father said persons can donate blood to the blood bank so the platelets can be extracted.
“People can donate from any group of blood and they will accept it and it will be a plus for her,” the father said.
Anyone willing to donate can contact 677 5280 or 679 1784.
