Four-year-old Reid Douglass and his mother, Claudia, have had wonderful conversations while riding in the car since he was a baby.
But on May 24, the conversation went differently.
After telling him how well he was doing with his medicine, how proud she was, how he had to maintain his positive attitude, Reid asked, "So, nobody's going to die?"
"When kids ask you something like that, you can't hesitate or they'll doubt you," Claudia Douglass said. "I don't know how I got the strength, but I told him, 'Yes, you're going to live.' "
Four-year-old Reid of Rock Hill is fighting cancer - acute lymphoblastic lymphoma, or ALL, a cancer of the bone marrow and blood that can progress rapidly if not treated.
It's the most common type of cancer in children ages 1 to 7, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
After answering what might have been the toughest question of her life, Claudia Douglass asked an oncologist at Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte if she had told the truth.
The answer was a resounding yes, Reid is winning his fight.
The National Cancer Institute reports the survival rate for children with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma younger than 5 years old is more than 90 percent.
Reid began his treatment - numerous rounds of various chemotherapy medicines - in April and has shown great progress.
"He's done very well," Claudia Douglass said. "They're surprised he still has his hair."
In the first stage of Reid's treatment, called induction, doctors attempted to remove all visible signs of leukemia and allow the normal blood cells to be restored.
He has a port in his chest through which the medicine is dispensed.
In the next stages, consolidation and interim maintenance, they try to get rid of any remaining leukemia cells to keep the cancer from returning. Reid is being given different chemotherapy medicines and steroids, which give him a huge appetite.
One morning, he had a waffle and an hour later tacos for breakfast. His father, Jay Douglass, has taken him to Dunkin' Donuts on several occasions to fill the craving.
The medicines also make him tired.
Reid likes to stay up instead of going to bed, but when it's about 7 in the evening and he asks to go to bed, that's when Claudia Douglass says she knows he's feeling a side effect.
October will probably be Reid's toughest month yet, she predicted, because it will be the 'delayed intensification' process, when he receives the most medicine - eight different chemotherapy drugs.
"He's been strong," she said. "He's a real trooper. Kids are amazing. They handle things adults can't. ... They just push through."
'What 4-year-old doesn't want to run?'
Claudia Douglass first noticed a change in her son at this year's Easter Egg Hunt at Cherry Park. Reid didn't want to participate; he wanted to stay beside her.
"He didn't want to run," she remembered. "What 4-year-old doesn't want to run?"
A few days later, he had a spider bite, or at least what appeared to be a spider bite.
His mother noticed a circular black bruise on his arm with a raised white dot.
Then they noticed newer bruises on his wrists and arms, and then small, red, circular dots on his collar bone area. At the pediatrician's office, he became pale. Blood work was ordered.
His hemoglobin was low and the pediatrician called a pediatric oncologist at Levine Children's Hospital. They were on their way to the children's hospital.
By 4 a.m., they knew Reid had leukemia.
"You don't really hear it," she said. "There's almost a cognitive dissonance. ... 'How could this be?' you're thinking."
Stepping onto the ward where children were losing their hair and pushing around their IVs stands, the Douglasses thought they were on the wrong floor, but it was where reality hit, said Jay Douglass.
"It takes a long time for it to register," he said. "The more you hear about it, the more you realize you don't know anything about it. ... It happened so quickly that you don't have time to think."
By the end of the month, Reid began treatment and had to leave his school, MacFeat Laboratory School at Winthrop University. He should be able to return in January, but it is unlikely he'll ever play contact sports.
After Reid finishes the delayed intensification process, he will be in a final stage called "maintenance' for almost three years.
His prognosis is good.
Reid has managed to keep his adventurous and good-natured spirit.
Every time he goes to the hospital for his medicine, he asks the doctors questions, so many in fact that they gave him extra tubes and other light equipment for him to play with.
"Everyone's a patient," Claudia said, grinning.
Because he didn't feel up to it when Mother's Day came in May, a few weeks ago Reid decided to do something for Mommy with breakfast in bed.
It's this spirit and their faith that he's going to be OK that keeps the Douglasses going, they said.
Someone had told Claudia to "be ready to be amazed," and she knows it's true.
"When you have ups or downs," she said, "your child can sense it, and they will be strong for you."
Source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/10/03/2659705/4-year-old-pushes-cancer-back.html
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