Our leukemia story

well i thought i might share our experience, and story, of our sons diagnoses with leukemia and the treatment that followed.

It all happened when he was 18 months old. We all got a bad tummy bug, so everyone was sick. Everyone got better except James, but I never

thought too much of it at the time, just presumed it would take him longer to get better. My son continued to wine a lot and was being very difficult which was unusual for him, but i thought he was just going through the terrible two stage early. I remember putting him into bed a couple of times a day to get him to calm down and shutting the door, this went on for about 2 days. Then the next day when i got  home from work which was a weekend so hubby was home with the kids at the time, i walked in the door to see a HUGE bruise on his face i was shocked! I asked what happened, but my husband said he has no idea, he said our son just walked out of the playroom liek that. We were really puzzled, as it looked like he had been hit by a freight train! anyway the next day he got all these tiny red spots on him and when i squeezed them they wouldn't disappear, all of the sudden alarm bells went of in my head (internal bleeding something was terribly wrong) we frantically took him to our doctor and she looked real worried. She then referred us to the hospital for blood tests, when we got to the hospital they took some blood but it kept clotting before it got to the lab so they kept re doing it In the mean time i was trying to keep positive, I rung my mum and told her and she started to get worried also, so we convinced ourselves it will be something silly, so i went back into our son hospital room hubby was talking with the nurse, and looking in a book on blood disorders. Hubby said i think its leukemia, and the nurse said "oh no, that is really rare its probably some other blood disorder" then the doctor came in and said he needs to be flown to princess Margaret hospital straight away, i was devastated and was feeling really scared, I rushed home and packed some things and got back to the hospital asap, then my son and I got into the ambulance and was transported to the airport and was flown in a small jet to Perth ( i had never been in an aeroplane before) when we got to emergency my son was limp and i was freaking out! I was shaking and crying and feeling very very ill. I wrung my mum crying and she was distraught also, and tryed to be positive but it wasn't working. I waited in emergency for 4 hours then someone finally looked at him, they spent about 40 minutes at it but couldn't come up with anything, we were then sent up stairs to 3rd floor which is oncology. Soon as we got there i vomited everywhere and then fell asleep. I vaguely remember the nurses cleaning up and lying me down onto a bed, it was terrible, my worst nightmare. The next day  some volunteer lady's were handing out pamphlets on cancer, and i responded saying" what! my son doesn't have cancer! why are you giving these to me?" she had a look of "oh deer what have i done" she then left and i started to panic again it was 3 days before  they told us what was wrong with him, but in the meantime our son had gotten a lot better as they were giving him chemo, which i didn't realize, i just new they were giving him somthing and it was making him better. They took us into a room and explained he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, they went on to say that it was the best form of leukemia to get if you were to get it leukemia and there success rate is very high especially in boys of James age group. So i immediately felt at ease and a sigh of relief that it wasn't a death sentence, there was treatment, and he could be most probably cured. They explained everything about the treatment and the disease itself, i walked out of that room with a positive outlook that my boy was gonna beat this.

I've just realized I've gotta go so I'll tell you more later. Here is a photo i took of our son when he first was diagnosed, and put on the drip and on chemo As you can see he has a bruise on his face, it had gone down a lot since he first got the bruise as this photo was taken 3 days later after  he was admitted at princess margaret hospital.