Gavin Fletcher Gavin Fletcher's Journey

Gavin started getting sick and throwing up the last night we were out of town on vacation.  He had no other symptoms other than the vomiting.  We drive home that day and he continued vomiting through the weekend.  On Sunday he started complaining that his stomach was hurting and I noticed it was pretty extended and hard.  We took him to an urgent care center on the 4th of July.  The Doctor there felt his belly and said he might have an obstruction in there and sent us to Children's Hospital in Highlands Ranch.  They took an x-ray and said he was constipated.  Over the next several days, we gave him miralax.  He was on and off through the rest of the week.  His stomach wasn't changing and would hurt the most after he ate.  On Sunday, we woke up to Gavin moaning because his stomach hurt so bad.  He was violently vomiting and when he wasn't doing that he just wanted to sleep.  We took him back to Children's Hospital and they did an ultrasound on him and found some inflammation in his belly.  They then did a CT scan and initially read it as a severely enlarged pancreas.  They drove him in an ambulance to the main Children's Hospital in Aurora and admitted him to the ICU.  They put him on a liquid only diet and had him hooked up to an IV, however since he had thrown up everything in his stomach and wasn't eating, his stomach was no longer cramping.  The doctors were perplexed, apparently pancreitis is very painful.  He was not complaining of any pain and looked like the healthiest kid in the hospital.  They were considering sending him home with plans to do another CT scan in a couple of weeks to compare.  Thankfully, they decided to run a few more tests first which began to point them in the direction of cancer.  Apparently the masses in his stomach were making his pancreas appear like it was enlarged.  It was confirmed after they completed an MRI and found that he had tumors throughout his abdomen.  After the biopsy they confirmed that he has B Cell lymphoma or Burkitts.  This cancer is one that grows extremely fast.  They believe that he only had this for weeks, not months before it was caught.  The good news with burkitts is that it is very treatable.  The evil cancer cells die fast and so the treatment is only 6 months compared to years like some other forms of cancer.  We feel blessed to be in one of the best hospitals in the country, to have an amazing support system and to have caught this before it moved to his bones or lukemia.