News & Stories
Q&A: Nurse Patty Kleinke is a lifeline for families whose child needs a blood or bone marrow transplant
First, you get the diagnosis: “Your child is critically ill, and needs a bone marrow transplant.”
Next, you connect with Patty Kleinke, lead nurse clinician for University of Minnesota Health’s Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) program.
Kleinke regularly interacts with people during what may be the most traumatic moment of their lives. With patience, empathy and an understanding of the process—Kleinke formerly worked as a nurse at Masonic Children’s Hospital—she’s often able to make the referral day a lot easier for families.
What conditions require a child to undergo a blood or bone marrow transplant?
We work with families of children who have a wide variety of diagnoses. Childhood cancers like leukemia, lymphoma and a variety of cancerous tumors, or other non-cancerous disorders, like sickle cell disease, aplastic anemia, even very rare conditions cases like Fanconi anemia or Epidermolysis bullosa.
Is the procedure complicated or dangerous?
Transplant is a very high risk process. Children going through transplant receive high dose chemotherapy and sometimes radiation prior to transplant.
This often produces side effects—nausea, pain or mouth sores, for example—that our provider team and nurses identify and manage. Every child reacts differently. Before a child is admitted to begin their prep for transplant (the chemo and/or radiation), we also evaluate them from head to toe, making sure there isn’t any kind of infection that would delay or potentially prevent a transplant from happening.