My 3 year old child has cancer i need some advice?
ALL is the most common pediatric cancer; it also strikes adults of all ages. Malignant transformation and uncontrolled proliferation of an abnormally differentiated, long-lived hematopoietic progenitor cell results in a high circulating number of blasts, replacement of normal marrow by malignant cells, and the potential for leukemic infiltration of the CNS and abdominal organs. Symptoms include fatigue, pallor, infection, and easy bruising and bleeding. Examination of peripheral smear and bone marrow is usually diagnostic. Treatment typically includes combination chemotherapy to achieve remission, intrathecal chemotherapy for CNS prophylaxis and/or cerebral irradiation for intracerebral leukemic infiltration, consolidation chemotherapy with or without stem cell transplantation, and maintenance chemotherapy for 1 to 3 yr to avoid relapse.
The only advice, and the best advice, that I can give is to contact your doctor and get a referral to St. Judes hospital in Memphis, Tennessee http://www.stjude.org/ St. Jude is a research hospital specializing in Children’s cancer and it is about the best that you can get. I don’t know what your doctor knows about it, but there are facilities in Memphis that will even accommodate the parents while their children are in the hospital. My very best friends pre teen daughter had a cancer which they stopped but they told her she could never have children. She has had four, so I think her treatment worked fine. You might just go to the web site and call them to see what they can do in helping you get there.
Trust me. Go to www.acor.org. Once you are there click on mailing lists, then click on “A”. Scroll down to “ALL-KIDS” and join the list. This is a free community type internet based group. You will find over 500 families on this list and all of them have a child with ALL. It is much more than a support group. You will have access to information from families in the same fight as your child. Everything that you can possibly imagine is there. Treatment protocols, names & numbers of ALL specific oncologists, what to expect, what not to expect, side effects from treatment, you name it, it is there. You can sit on the sidelines and read the posts or you can actively participate and ask questions. There is a glossary of medical terms that will help you with reading reports. This is real time info from families currently in the fight. One of the best resources on childhood cancer available anywhere on Earth.
I am so sorry to hear this, my heart goes out to you and your husband. I don’t think there is anything that any of us can say to you that will prepare you for what is to come. The one thing I do know is that kids deal with these things so much better than we do. They seem to take it in stride when the parents stay calm. We are the ones that tend to get upset and can’t deal with things and that’s what will make the child get upset. As for the cemo, it will be hard on all of you, just try to keep a smile for your son, and when he asks a question answer it as honest as you can, they understand more than you think. It’s their body and they know how they feel. It’s hard to tell them it’s going to be okay when they feel like that’s not the truth. Cemo is hard and sometimes you will feel like you can’t watch your baby go through it anymore. But, just remember kids watch your face to see how you react to something.
You have my deepest sympathies, but what you are doing right now is probably the best way to deal with it. We has humans get so much relief if we just talk about what is going on. Face to face discussion is always better than over the internet. Therefore, my advice is to contact the american cancer society and find a local support group or other women who have had children with cancer for someone to share your frustrations with. Most of the time we don’t need advice, we need someone who will just listen. Your husband would like to be that person for you, but he is going through it the same and has the same frustrations. Since he is a guy, he wants to fix things for you and the family. Since he can’t do that, it will drive him crazy hearing about your frustrations. When you find the support group, encourage him to attend. Knowing that other fathers have had to deal with the same things will help.
