Emily Brown

Welcome to our CaringBridge site. Emily was diagnosed with Leukemia (cancer of the blood and bone marrow) on Oct 17th 2014.  We've created this site to keep friends and family updated. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement during this time when it matters most.

We started noticing something was wrong around September 2014, when Emily started limping during a family trip to Canada's Wonderland. At the time she was mis-diagnosed with an inflammation of the hip called Toxic Synovitis.   A few weeks later, we noticed a large lump under Emily's arm.   After a number of tests (Ultrasound, X-Rays and Blood work), we finally got a referral to the Hematology/Oncology department at Sick Kids  but the appointment was scheduled for Nov 19th (a month away).        

The next day, I was speaking with a friend and Mom from Madeleine's class (Jen Pomerantz) and told her about Emily.   Jen's old neighbor just happened to be an oncology doctor at Sick Kids.   As a favor to Jen,  Dr Alexander  scheduled Emily for an appointment the next day at Sick Kids.   Dr Alexander looked at the lump/lymph node and scheduled Emily for surgery the following week.   

We left the appointment and were walking to the car, when the phone rang.   We were asked to return to the clinic to discuss some new results that had just come in.   At this point, I knew that something that something was wrong.   Emily and I arrived back on the 8th floor at Sick Kids and were told that Emily had cancer.   The  blood test had shown blasts/Leukemia cells.

Everything from that moment is a bit of a blurr.  We went home and packed our bags for our first long stay at Sick Kids and the beginning of the most difficult time of our lives...