Teens & Children

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.

When Mary Elizabeth was 10 years old, she noticed a large lump on her neck. Her parents also noticed her lack of energy, but doctor after doctor couldn’t find anything wrong.

“On a family vacation, she wasn’t looking right, and we took her back to the doctor and insisted on bloodwork. The doctors were convinced it was mono,” said Mary’s mother, Mandy.

In February 2018, my youngest twin (by three minutes), Jeremiah was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Our world and lives were turned upside down, to say the least.

As a single mother, I never felt or experienced pain like this in my entire life. It felt like everything was crashing around me. Jeremiah began treatment with chemotherapy at the Children’s Hospital.

In February 2019, our daughter, Claire, was diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) just three short months after we celebrated her second birthday. We noticed a few discolored bumps on her body and assumed it was just a reaction to a new soap I had purchased, but then they began to pop up on other parts of her body.

At age five, on my fourth day of kindergarten, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). With the 85% survival rate for ALL, I was confident I would go through this for the next three years but one month later after the induction period, my doctor told us I didn’t respond and I may need a bone marrow transplant.

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.

There came a day when we had to ask her to choose. We laid out the options carefully not wanting to alarm her with the hopelessness behind either.

My daughter is now almost five years in remission after battling acute myeloid leukemia (AML) twice - once when she was four and again when she was six. 

Five-year-old Leo was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) in June 2019. His parents had noticed bruising on his legs, petechiae around his eyes, fatigue, and shortness of breath, but because the symptoms didn’t present all at once, they didn’t think it was anything serious.