Make A Child Smile

Joshua's Story
written by mom Karen

Joshua was born on 12/13/1998, they had to do a emergency cesarean section because he was positioned wrong and his heart rate was dropping fast.

He was the best baby you could ask for. Joshua never cried or made any fuss not even as a toddler. He had intermittent fevers of 102 and above since birth. Every time I called the pediatrician he would just tell me to give me some Motrin or Tylenol and keep an eye on him. If the fever last more than three days he would say to bring Joshua into the office. Well the fevers never lasted that long, 2 days tops.

About 4 weeks before Joshua was diagnosed he was having very high fevers on and off again for weeks. One day he had a lot of pain in his arms and he couldn't raise his arms above his head. I thought that he had broken his collar bone and took him into our local emergency room. Once there, they did some x-rays and found nothing wrong. I was told that he might have strained something, so home we went.

One week later and nothing had changed. Joshua’s arms were still hurting really bad so back to the emergency room we went. Again they took more x-rays and still didn't find anything wrong. While in the ER I noticed some little red dots on and around his shoulder and in his mouth. I pointed them out to the doctor and he said the dots on his shoulder was a rash from the sun and the ones in his mouth were from Josh biting the insides of his mouth. (I know now those little red dots were Petechiae pronounced (pet-tea-key-eye).

On the 22nd of June, 2002 our family went to a pool party at a friends house. I felt so bad for Josh that day, because he looked so sad and didn't want to swim or play with anyone. I thought he was coming down with the flu. One week later on June 29th, 2002 (that's the day my whole world fell apart) Joshua was not feeling very well that morning he was very pale and wouldn't eat breakfast (and for Josh not to eat that meant something had to be wrong). He always ate everything and anything, he would take food from his plate and stuff his little cheeks until no more would fit, it was almost like he wanted to save some for later. Joshua has two brothers and two sisters I always wondered if he thought maybe they were going to steal his food from him. He was also very warm that morning, so instead of taking him to another one of our local ER's I decided to take him to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

It was the longest day of my life. When I got there Joshua felt a lot better and didn't have a fever anymore, but he still looked very pale. The nurse came in and asked me and his father all kinds of questions (I’m not even sure what they all were anymore) I know they asked if we had traveled outside the United States. Next they wanted blood samples from Josh. I told them OK but they only had one chance to get the needle in his vein. I had seen too many children being poked over and over again all because someone didn't know what they were doing or because they were new to drawing blood.

Well after a few hours the blood work finally came back and I couldn't believe what I heard from the doctor's (Leukemia) I really didn't know much about it other than it was Cancer. Then I asked why my little boy? He never did anything wrong and didn't deserve this. I must have went into shock after hearing that Josh had cancer. I really don't remember too much after that. All I knew is that I wanted to take my sweet little boy home and say this was all a bad dream. I asked myself over and over again what did I do wrong?

Joshua had a white blood count of 167,400 his hemoglobin was 3.6 his platelets were 12,000 his red blood count was 1.50 and his ldh was 2895, so he was immediately diagnosed with High Risk Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia without even having a spinal tap or a bone marrow aspiration done. The following day Josh was taken to the operating room where a medi port was placed in his chest for venous access. They also did a spinal tap at this time.

Analysis of his spinal fluid showed no evidence of meningeal disease. He required a lot of packed red blood cells and platelet transfusions throughout his hospital stay which was 11 days. He was put on POG #9905 Regimen A for standard risk leukemia. Joshua went from high risk to standard risk because they found an extra chromosome only in my leukemia cells.

Joshua is now in remission and has completed 3½ years of chemotherapy as of February 2005. Also he never lost his hair during chemo treatment, I think he must have very strong hair genes. I am still amazed everyday at how strong Joshua is. We are so very proud of him. We can't believe that almost 5 years have gone by already. Me and his father say that Joshua is our LITTLE HERO!