Toddler Is Recovering After Bone-Marrow Transplant : Leukemia: Stephanie Rudat is doing well in her leukemia fight and will be coming home Saturday from a Seattle hospital, a family friend said.

Stephanie Rudat, a 17-month-old toddler from Orange County who went to Seattle for a bone-marrow transplant in her fight with leukemia, is doing well and coming home on Saturday, a family friend said Monday.

“She’s eating, making sounds and is very alert,” Emmanuel Azariah said. “She’s eating solid food and gaining weight.”

Stephanie, who is the daughter of Kelly and Farhat Rudat of Anaheim, has nearly cleared the 100-day period when her body could reject the transplant, which was performed at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Since her release from the center three weeks ago, Stephanie and her family have been living in Seattle, which enabled her to be close to the center’s doctors.

“She’s doing quite well right now,” said Dr. John Wagner, an oncology fellow at the Hutchinson center.

Stephanie was found to have non-lymphocetic leukemia when she was 6 weeks old. Chemotherapy helped send her illness into remission, and last summer the baby had an autologous transplant, in which her own bone marrow was removed, chemically treated and reinserted into her body with the hope that all the cancer had been killed.

However, she had a relapse.

The parents were told by doctors that the transplant was an extremely dangerous procedure that gave their daughter only a 40% chance of survival.

Last June, the Rudats suffered another setback when they discovered that their insurance money had run out after costs reached $1 million. Most of her treatment was at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

Medi-Cal agreed to take over expenses but balked after a donor was found outside the state, at the Hutchinson center. But Medi-Cal officials reconsidered their decision after it was argued that the Seattle donor was Stephanie’s last chance for survival.