Surviving Cancer

hello there.

My son Michael was diagnoised with NHL on the 17th of Jan 2006, he was complaining of a pain in his tummy and his jaw for the previous 6 weeks and these pains got progressively worse. He had a cat scan and MRI on Jan 11 and 12 and biopsy on 13th of jan.

We weren’t totally shocked by the results as he was in one of the top Irish hospitals and they already had mentioned a mass and the biopsy was another hint. It was decided to treat him at a childrens hospital. There his NHL was staged etc and the good news was that it was at stage 3 but it was in his liver, left kidney, intensines stomach and left lung. Stage 3 meant that it could be treated aggressively and he had an 85% chance of being all clear by June 06.

Yes the treatment was severe and he spent 14 weeks in hosp at one stage, although he never got chemo sickness he got everything else. Any way he finished his treatments at the end of April and 6 weeks later his Hickman catherder was removed as he was all clear. But his back was sore, we all put this down to the 13 IT treatments that he had directly into the spine but by the begining of August it was clear that there was something wrong.

An MRI showed it was back and this time it was terminal, it was stage 4 and it was in his spleen, jaw, spine and at 1st they thought the brain but our luck was in and it wasn’t in the brain. He was given a couple of months (even the staff had tears at this news) at most to live and i dreaded the end of his days if it was also in his brain but michael a fighter decided that he was going to try the extreme treatment that was on offer.

Our oncologists advised that children normally don’t make it thru the 1st round of chemo but Michael did and he got so sick that he doesn’t remember an entire week, thankfully and it was then decided to blood type the rest of us as he was going to require a stem cell transplant and as the cancer was in his own marrow he needed a donor, unfortunately none of us matched so a search was started, 1st here in Ireland and then world wide. His 2nd round of chemo went better but the next step after that was full body radiation and that required the transplant to rescue him from all this treatment.

But no match was yet found so Michael was then put on an anti body, Rituxinab, fortunately for Michael this worked and finally a match from the USA was found, so in the middle of November Michael had his conditioning and his transplant on Dec 1st. We were very aware that very few people both adults and children survive this type of relapse, in fact there is no known figures, anyway to cut a very long story short, post transplant was one of the most difficult times for me as i was very aware of all that could happen (and still can) but Michael is home from hosptial and his doctors are quietly confident that he is going to make it. We are still in isolation and unfortunately he got the shingles in the begining of March but has made a full recovery.

We still have a long way to go but i believe that it was Michaels positive mental attitude that was the magic agreement in his amazing recovery so far.