Grayson W.
Tennessee
Birth Date - July 21, 2014
Diagnosis - AML-M7
Theme: Realistic DINOSAURS
Due Date: 1/1/18
Grayson's Story
We started noticing a lot of bruising on Grayson the first month or two of 2016. We took him to his pediatrician who sent us to Children's Hospital. Lab work revealed Grayson had a very low number of platelets. We were referred to a hemology/oncology doctor. Our second visit to her office was for a scheduled bone marrow aspiration to rule out leukemia. We waited nearly 4 hours for the results. The pathologist reported there were abnormal cells, but there was no diagnosis. A couple of weeks later Grayson started sleeping a lot. He also was crying with leg and hip pain. When he would walk he would sometimes just sit down or fall down and scream in pain. He was admitted to the hospital and had another aspiration, a biopsy and spinal tap.
At 11 AM the next morning Grayson was diagnosed with AML. He was 21 months old. We were overwhelmed with all of the consent to treat forms. A central line was placed and he started chemo the same day. He had to endure 2 rounds of intense chemo therapy. During that time he stayed strong and happy. We were told the type of leukemia Grayson had was very hard to keep in remission. The plan was, once in remission, he would have a bone marrow transplant. In August we were told he had a perfect-match unrelated donor who was a 25 year old male. He came through his transplant fantastically.
We were almost to his one year post-transplant mark when he started having severe headaches. After two weeks of headaches, Greyson lost muscle control of his left arm and was running into things that he knew were there. I called his oncology doctor, and was told to take him to the ER. They did a CTA scan, which came back clear, and a spinal tap that showed Grayson's spinal fluid pressure was very high. The spinal fluid had to be sent off to a lab and we waited almost 20 hours before we got results. Grayson had relapsed and there was AML in his spinal fluid. We are now at the beginning of the journey to gain remission again. Grayson is a fighter and he will get through this!!!
