Parker was four years old, in the second year of preschool, and had a normal childhood. There was nothing out of the ordinary leading up to his diagnosis. For the four days leading up to taking him in, he was out of breath quite often, but it was on and off, with nothing consistent. The day I brought him to urgent care, I felt what could be called a mother's intuition and felt like I needed to check his heart rate. I sat there with him in the living room, and his HR was reading 170. I took him in right when urgent care opened, and they did a chest X-ray, and it showed his entire right lung completely white.
With no real answers, they sent us to Phoenix Children’s Hospital to get further tests and scans done. We got to the hospital and got the scans done, and on September 25, I was sitting there in the triage room when a doctor walked in and said, "There is a 10cm mass pressing against your son's chest." Still no diagnosis or answers. We went up to the ICU with labored breathing and low respiratory numbers. Everything started to become a blur. On September 28, we got the news that his mass was cancer, and he started chemo that day. On October 4, just two weeks before Parker’s 5th birthday, we got the diagnosis of stage 4 T-cell lymphoma (TCL), a rare type of cancer in kids. From there we got discharged on October 10 and had a rough start in and out of the hospital, long hospital stays, and some scary calls down to the ICU. Today, Parker is finishing his third cycle out of six cycles and has about 2.5 years of treatment.
Riley
Family member and caregiver
