Bone-Marrow Recipient, 9, Ill but in ‘Very Good Spirits’

Tori Lee Glezos, the first patient to receive a bone-marrow transplant at an Orange County hospital, is ill with an infection and pneumonia, but her spirits are high, and her doctors say they believe that her chances for survival are still strong.

Doctors at Childrens Hospital of Orange County had predicted that 9-year-old Tori would suffer some kind of infection before the transplanted marrow took root and began producing disease-fighting white blood cells.

“That’s virtually inevitable,” said Dr. Geni Bennetts, the hospital’s director of hematology and oncology.

Over the weekend, Tori “developed a systemic bacterial infection and pneumonia, which is fairly common (after) high-dose chemotherapy and bone-marrow transplant,” said Dr. Mitchell S. Cairo, the hospital’s director of cancer research.

Tori is being treated with antibiotics and transfusions of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets.

“She is in stable but still critical condition,” Cairo said, “and (she) is in very good spirits.”

The Huntington Beach girl underwent intensive chemotherapy three weeks ago to kill a highly malignant muscle cancer--called rhabdomyosarcoma--that had spread through her body.

Because the high-dose chemotherapy destroyed Tori’s bone marrow, her doctors replaced it 13 days ago with a transfusion of marrow that they previously had taken from her hip bones.

A second bone-marrow transplant--on a 3-year-old Santa Ana girl who also suffered from a spreading cancer--was performed at Childrens Hospital last Thursday, according to a hospital spokeswoman. The girl, whose name is being withheld at the parents’ request, was listed in stable condition Monday.