Owen Johnson Owen Johnson 88

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We're Ericka and Andy, Owen's proud parents, and we'll be using this page to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
Our boy, Owen, is a 15-year old who LOVES sports, friends, and gaming. Owen has played baseball since he was 6 and it has always been his primary, favorite sport. Owen plans to be a professional baseball player, knowing that he will have to outwork the millions of other boys who will be competing for this coveted position. He is naturally athletic and has always excelled at all sports, so he's very fit, strong and has always been healthy his whole life. Owen has a huge heart and cares deeply for all his friends, "the boys", and family.  He is always building up his friends and teammates, only seeing the strengths and potential in people. Owen also has a younger sister, Charlotte, who is 14 and they are very close. We've always felt extremely blessed and grateful for such amazing, smart, caring, funny, talented and healthy kids!

In early June 2021, Owen had a series of nose bloods that were hard to stop and would last 30-45 min. I decided to bring Owen into the doctor just to be sure there wasn't anything we needed to worry about. They did some bloodwork and while we were on our way to Iowa for a baseball tourney, we got a call that Owen's platelets were at 118K (bottom of normal range is 150K), so we scheduled a bloodwork recheck for a few days later and he went on to play baseball all weekend! After returning on Monday, we rechecked his blood and platelets were at 105K, so the primary care physician referred us to see a hematologist to determine why his platelets were low. Our hematology appt was scheduled for 9 days later as they weren't particularly concerned since Owen was feeling fine. At this point Owen still thought I was being 'classic mom' worrying about nothing and he reassured me that he was fine. He played in another baseball tournament that weekend but we did start to notice that he was saying he was feeling cold and a little less hungry. Now Andy and I were really starting to worry something was going on. On Monday, June 21, Owen took himself out of his baseball game because he was feeling cold, weak and dizzy. Since Owen was experiencing these symptoms, we rechecked blood on Tuesday morning and his platelets were at 99K. Wednesday morning we ventured down to Children's Oncology & Hematology Clinic in Mpls and they ran a lot more bloodwork. We waited for results and his platelets actually came back at 118K which was encouraging! And since Owen looked so good, the doctor did not think he had cancer. We left encouraged but knew we still had a mystery to solve as some other values were slightly off, we just needed to figure out why. Well, shortly after getting home, the doctor called and said "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your son has Leukemia." As soon as the pathologist looked at Owen's blood, they knew he had Leukemia. In those next few hours, it felt like the world had stopped, our world was crumbling and we were all in disbelief. Upon telling Owen his diagnosis, his first words were "I can't play baseball". Fortunately, Owen's new Oncologist called that evening and spoke with all of us which was helpful and reassuring that we CAN and WILL beat this. Specifically, Owen has B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). The doctors are encouraged by how healthy, fit and strong Owen is. They said most others with blood that looked like this would be quite ill, but you'd never know it with Owen! While Andy, Charlotte and I cried an ocean of tears, Owen was confident he'd beat this, be back on the pitching mound, using his crazy speed in the outfield and cheering on his teammates! 
In our house, if there is ever a challenge, we build each other up and say "You're a Johnson!" Us Johnson's don't do the bare minimum and we don't back away from a challenge and we're proud of that! This is no different, we're in it to win it and kick cancer's ass; Owen's got games to get to!