Showing posts with label Brandon's story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brandon's story. Show all posts

Brandon's Story (part 2) - Diagnosed

One of the reasons that I'm participating in "Summit for Wishes" is to honor the memory of what my husband and his family went through when/after he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in 1985. Their story has touched me in so many ways - and so I'm sharing it with you...

In "Brandon's story - part 1" I gave a very general introduction to this series. In part 2, I'm telling you more about when he was actually diagnosed.  

Like so many children who get sick - Brandon was an active and healthy toddler who became lethargic, tired and cranky almost overnight.  Confused by the change in his demeanor, his parents took him to the doctor and were basically told that he was just spoiled. Unfortunately it wasn't that simple... 

The day Brandon was diagnosed, he wasn't even at the hospital for himself. His older sister had hurt her ankle. When they knew they were going to the hospital to have it checked, they called ahead to see if they could have blood tests done on him since they would be there anyways (despite the "spoiled" diagnosis, they were still very concerned about the changes in him).

After a small finger prick... the doctors knew that something was terribly wrong. And within an hour, Brandon's parents found themselves sitting at a table with hematologists, oncologists and psychologists; hearing words like "cancer", "your son" and "treatment" in the same sentence. The official ALL diagnosis came a little later that day. His first blood transfusion came that evening.

Brandon's Story (part 1)


This is Brandon about 25 years ago. He was just shy of 3 and a half when he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) on October 23, 1985. On that same day, I was celebrating my 4th birthday... It's just a weird coincidence but it's pretty crazy to think back and realize that around the time I was telling off the neighbour boy for blowing out my birthday candles, my future husband's family was being told that their son was very sick and discussing treatment options to fight the cancer that was attacking his little body.

25 years later it's all too easy to brush aside or trivialize what his family must have been going through because he's okay today. Because they were lucky enough to be blessed with the miracle of remission.

But did you know that when you have a child who is diagnosed with a cancer like ALL, the doctors will never tell you that he or she is cured?

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