On the evening of Thursday May 28th, 2020, we were watching tv as a famly at home when we noticed Kyler (3 at the time) playing with something in his mouth.  That something turned out to be blood.  We assumed he had either brushed his teeth too hard or since he'd recently started the habit of biting his toes and fingers he might have scratched his mouth somehow.  We contacted his pediatrician and scheduled an appointment for the following Wednesday. Friday all was normal an dwell, but that changed the morning of Saturday May 30th, 2020.  That morning as I was preparing to make breakfast my husband noticed Kyler's mouth was bleeding a lot, he looked super pale and he was dozing off hen he'd only woken up 2 hours before.  So we decided to take him to our local emergency room.  They did blood tests, X-rays and some other tests and discovered all of his levels to be extremely low.  They felt it would be in our best interest to transfer us to the specialists at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital.  Once there they tested him as well and he quickly started receiving blood and platelet transfusions for over 24 hours. He couldn't eat or drink anything the first 12 hours which he hated but thankfully this made it to where levels were high enough to be moved out of ICU on that Monday to a new and better room which allowed him to move around, rest and recover.  He was otherwise healthy in all other vital areas so that was the good news.  The scary news was that on Tuesday (just 20 days before his 4th birthday) he had gotten a bone marrow biopsy to test for what they believed the reason for all this was, a form of lymphoblastic leukemia.  They received part 1 of the results that night and it confirmed the diagnosis.  The next day he was in the OR getting a mediport put in.  He was finally released from inpatient on June 11th, 2020. He has now been undergoing the different phases of treatment for just over a year, some phases were better than others, but thankfully he was only inpatient one other time since the start.  On August 16th, he will begin his 3rd cycle of maintenance.  This will include an IV infusion chemotherapy, IV antibiotic, a lumbar puncture with chemotherapy, one week of twice-daily oral steroid, and once-daily oral chemotherapy.  He is overall doing well and getting stronger and his wonderful care team has cleared him to start kindergarten on August 30th! 

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If you would like to make a donation by mail please send a check to:  The Cure Starts Now Foundation; 10280 Chester Road; Cincinnati, OH 45215 and put the child's name in the memo.

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