On March 10, 2025, I heard the words no parent ever wants to hear: “Your son has cancer!” He was turning 18 months old in two days.
Maverick was not his normal self about a month before his diagnosis, the week I went into the hospital to have his baby sister. I knew something was off, and it was doctor visit after doctor visit, and I was told the same thing — it’s viral or him being a typical toddler due to bruising and fever that lasted three weeks+ and petechiae (blood blisters that appear as a rash). His pediatrician didn’t really know what she was looking at when I took him in multiple times. It took a trip to CHOA urgent care right by our house, with me thinking that he actually had an ear infection, for that doctor to tell me that he either had a post-viral suppression or leukemia.
I lost everything that I had in me in that room. We were in urgent care for a total of 30 minutes from start to finish, when I was told to take him to the hospital for further testing. I said okay. I will take him to the local hospital, and I was told no. He needs to go to Arthur M. Blank Hospital. My older girls were in the car with my newborn at that time, and I walked out the doors and they knew in my face. Something was wrong.
I was told that I had to take their brother to the hospital because they think that he has cancer. Around 10:00 p.m. that night, my fears were confirmed. We spent two weeks after that in the hospital for him to have his port placed and start receiving chemo.
After Maverick’s first bone marrow biopsy and spinal tap, it was another blow as a parent being told that he was high risk due to his white blood cell count going in, as well as it being found in his spinal fluid.
During his first two phases of treatment, we were in and out of the hospital due to fever and sickness. In the third phase, he was admitted before he went on a constant infusion for 28 days. This is his port being accessed at home, anywhere we go, anything he does, trips, playing with his sisters, while he sleeps for 28 days. My tiny little boy had to be with a backpack strapped to him, going to the doctor twice a week to have the medication changed out. He did great with that. A whole lot better than I would’ve expected any almost two-year-old to do.
This past phase of him being admitted every other week for high-dose methotrexate, which is a 24-hour infusion, has been the hardest phase on him so far. We’ve dealt with fever, reactions, finding out he has pancreatitis, him being in constant pain, and being pushed more towards physical therapy as well as occupational therapy.
He never cleared the chemo before a 72 mark.
Maverick is set to go back on blina (backpack) on October 28, and that will require at least a 24-hour stay to make sure that he doesn’t have a reaction.
Throughout this journey, he has received 11 blood transfusions and 10 platelet infusions, as well as two IVIG infusions. The frontline treatments that most children go through are eight to 10 months. Maverick is set to end his frontline treatment around the year mark of his diagnosis date, March 10, 2026. After that, he will go into maintenance.
This journey has been anything but easy, as a mother not being able to take this from my child, and it’s been hard on my husband as well as all three of our girls.
Having to leave my girls when he was first diagnosed, one being only a month old, is a mother’s worst nightmare. Over the past seven months, they’ve grown accustomed to us being gone, and that, in turn, kills me.
At any given moment, we could have to leave home, and he could be admitted for any reason, and I not being able to have all my babies together is nothing I wish upon anyone. He has missed out on three full seasons of watching his sisters play softball, something he’s done since he was two weeks old. That his element. Every time they walk out the door with their uniforms on, the look in his eyes breaks me all over.
Blood cancer has taken so much from him as well as his sisters.
He can’t be a normal two-year-old; there are no birthday parties, no big social gatherings, and holidays are going to be very sparse this year, which has to be done to keep him somewhat healthy.
Courtney
Mother and caregiver
