Preston Gannam
One Saturday morning when Preston was 2 years old, he woke up and yelled, “Mommy, I can’t walk.” I ran into his room and lifted him out of bed. When I placed him down on the floor to have him stand up, he collapsed. I had noticed him limping the day before, but thought I had just cut one of his toenails too short.
I immediately called our pediatrician who told us to go straight to WCH. After many tests, we were sent home and asked to repeat the bloodwork on Monday, because his blood counts looked unusual. Our pediatrician repeated the bloodwork, on Monday, and we got the results back from the lab on Tuesday. His counts were still not normal. Our pediatrician did not like it and admitted Preston to Wolfson Children’s Hospital for further testing.
Our pediatrician told us it could be anything from “anemia to leukemia”. Once at Wolfson Children’s Hospital they took more blood and we meet with a hematologist, Dr. Michael Joyce. After he looked at Preston’s bloodwork more closely, he told us he had seen “blasts” in Preston’s blood. Those “blasts,” he said, were usually a sign of leukemia and they were going to do a bone marrow aspiration the next day to confirm.
On Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Preston was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). On May 15, 2003 Preston had surgery to insert a port-a-cath, and he began his first chemo treatment. That day would be the 1st day of a 2 ½ year treatment plan for Preston. Preston went into remission at Day 28 and has continued to stay in remission.
He is 5 ½ years post treatment and we are not seeing any signs of late effects from his treatment.
