Dylan Tapley Dylan’s fight

On November 4th, 2019, what we thought was going to be a quick visit to the ER turned into a parents worst nightmare! Dylan had been having cold symptoms for about 2 weeks, on October 30, I had taken him into urgent care, he had a fever, sore throat, stuffy nose.. etc. the doc said he thought it was a sinus infection and possibly strep. He put Dylan on some meds and sent us home.  The next few days, Dylan started feeling worse, throwing up, nausea, and extremely tired. Sunday evening, Dylan informed me that he was having some pain in his lower abdomen and that it hurt to urinate.  Monday, I took Dylan back to urgent care, after explaining to them what was going on, they sent us to the ER.  When we arrived at the er, they first did a urine test, thinking maybe Dylan had a UTI, or possibly kidney stones. A while later, they came back, put in an IV, and took some blood. About an hour later, they came and got Dylan and took him for a chest x-ray. Another hour went by, and then a doc came in. He started by telling us that he was a “blood doctor” and proceeded to tell Dylan that he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital. He began to explain that his blood tests were extremely abnormal! His white blood cell count was 210,000!!! Normal range is below 10,000!! He then said, what this tells me is that you have Leukemia. He also told us that Dylan had crystals in his urine and that his kidneys were only functioning at about 50%. He said that his first step was getting Dylan on some extremely strong meds to work on getting the crystals out before they got into his kidneys. They also started him on strong iv antibiotics. Dylan went by ambulance that night to children’s hospital in Aurora. Dylan was taken into the PICU and was closely monitored through the night and most of the next day.  On Wednesday the 6th, Dylan was taken into to OR, he had a spinal tap, a bone marrow biopsy, and they placed a port in his chest. We were told that Dylan has T-cell Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. When they did the spinal tap, they also injected chemo into his spinal fluid.