Gavin’s Story

Site created on March 18, 2021

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.

Newest Update

August 07, 2022

Journal entry by Alicia Crisp —

Hi friends! It's been a while...in a good way! Gavin has been having a wonderful summer so far... playing with buddies, swimming, doing gymnastics, and enjoying lots of boat days with family. It has been SO nice to relax a bit more compared to last summer. He even got to help Subaru donate some blankets and craft kids to Children's Hospital, which was a pretty big deal to Gavin. He really wants to bake some cookies for the kids in the hospital, but Child Life is going to help make a little list of good gift ideas that he can work on. 

We had round 4 of maintenance this week, so more IV chemo and a spinal tap, which went super smoothly. The steroids and chemo hit him a bit harder for some reason this time, but he's just a bit run down and tired right now. Luckily, the weather was a bit rainy anyways, so lots of movie nights, games, and baking to entertain him. 3 more months until we see IV chemo or steroids again, so hopefully he'll have an easy time getting ready for 2nd grade!!
Read More of the journal titled "August 07, 2022"
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