Leukemia

Toben had entered preschool at 3½ years old, and within a few months, he was getting sick often. He started getting random fevers that would go away in a day. When he got leg and arm pains, we started to get concerned. The pains were so bad that he couldn't walk and would wince when we picked him up or moved him.

In April 2020, three-year-old Cayden began experiencing leg pain and developed an unusual limp that alarmed his mother, Courtney. Soon, the pain progressed to a stiff neck and loss of appetite. Just two weeks later, after multiple tests and doctor appointments, Courtney and her husband would hear the words that every parent fears, "your child has cancer".

Looking back at when this journey started, it kind of feels unreal. Life can change in an instant. For us, that moment was on September 2, 2016. Bella had been having fevers on and off for two months with no other symptoms and medicine was barely keeping them down. We took her to the doctor's office and were told it was probably just a virus.

Lolo was a happy and active 10-year-old when she was diagnosed with pediatric acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) in December 2012. She spent the next six months at Children’s Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, isolated from her classmates and critically ill.

From 2013 to 2014, after he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), Jude endured four cycles of intense chemotherapy, lengthy hospitalizations, difficult side effects, and months of home isolation. Jude's younger brother, Finn, was born in May 2014 in the middle of Jude's chemotherapy cycle.

I’m a 12-year survivor of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). I was diagnosed on Sunday, October 4, 2009.

Our son Dominic was diagnosed with MLL-rearranged acute myeloid leukemia (AML) on July 14, 2020. The mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) gene rearrangement in AML is considered a high-risk feature, and treatment typically involves high-dose chemotherapy to induce remission followed by bone marrow transplantation. The MLL-rearrangement is also called the KMT2A-rearrangement or 11q23 rearrangement.

In 2017, Mya was just two years old when diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML M6) in her central nervous system, which created solid tumors in her brain and spine.