Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. We are starting this to help our family and friends stay in the loop with what's going on with Gavin, in hopes to give us a little more time with the kids, and less on the phone.
In the beginning of March, few days after Gavin's 6th birthday, he woke up with a fever and nausea. Throughout the day he started having increasingly bad hip pain, which prompted an urgent care visit. He was positive for strep throat, but the hip pain was a mystery. They drew labs, started antibiotics and sent them home to rest. The following day he was seen in the pediatricians office. Still having terrible hip pain they again repeated lab work. His labs were still off, but really did not give answers.
Antibiotics were continued for the strep and his hip pain improved over the next few days. He followed up again with his pediatrician 4 days later, more labs were done (Gavin is quite the trooper!). Lab work was still off, so an appointment was set up with a Hematologist. At this point the thought was still that his hip pain he had and his labs were due to a possible viral infection, but they wanted the specialist to weigh in.
On Monday 3/15 he saw the Hematologist, in which they found abnormal cells in his blood, concerning for cancer. After further review of all the labs, it was decided to do a bone marrow biopsy, which he had on Tuesday. Unfortunately the results showed that he has ALL (Acute lymphoblastic leukemia). There are different kinds of ALL, which we will find out at a later day. After the ALL type comes back we will know a more definitive plan moving forward, although at best we are still looking at some form of therapy for about 2 years, though hopefully much less intense over time.
We had an easy breezy clinic day, believe it or not! Just a lab check to make sure Gavin is ready for the next phase of treatment (he is). We get a whole 9 days before we return for the clinic to start what’s called Interim Maintenance. Basically, every 10 days he will get two chemo medicines, and one (methotrexate) will incrementally increase each time over the next 6 weeks. Methotrexate might have a little more nausea with it, and may cause mouth sores, but we will hope and pray both of those issues can just stay away.
In the mean time, Gavin’s been back to school! I think he’s really missed seeing his friends, and they certainly missed him! Carter is also enjoying a little break from the big brother 😉
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