Meet Gavin!! ~ A PCRF Kid
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.“– Dale Carnegie
While you were celebrating the start of the New Year this past January, Gavin, age 5, and his parents were at the hospital. He had a horrible Christmas due to terrible pain from “apparent infections” in both ears. The infections had been steady for months. “Too frequent,” thought Mom. Tests were ordered — CT scans, x-rays, blood work. As it turned out, three-fourths of his bone marrow was composed of leukemia cells. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).
Gavin kicked off the first two days of January with two surgeries. They would be followed by four phases of chemotherapy and a “maintenance” plan that will last until 2013.
“As absurd as it sounds, Gavin hit the cancer lottery,” says Mom. “He has the most curable type of pediatric cancer. His chromosomes are the most receptive to chemotherapy. He is in the best age group for responsiveness to the treatment protocol that has been developed and fine-tuned for ALL through decades of research and study. He has been through so much for a five year old kid, but there are so many kids that have been and are going through far more difficult and less certain treatments. No one deserves cancer, but a child having cancer seems an especially brutal reality. We are devoted and determined to help other children who receive a cancer diagnosis have a treatment protocol that will result in remission and cure. PCRF is striving to do just that.”
“We are so thankful for Gavin’s entrance into maintenance, and while we still have a long road ahead, we are grateful that he is handling everything well, returning to his normal self, and has gotten used to the medications he takes everyday as just another part of daily life.”
Gavin is probably the only 5-year-old you know who wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up. He can even pronounce the word! And, he can readily tell you the difference between dinosaurs. To top it off, he’s an expert on Star Wars, too. Darth Vader, beware!
