Lucas G's quilt    (Quilt Completed)

Thank you

Thank you so much for Lucas' amazing quilt. He loves it and has gone to sleep snuggled up in it.

Finished photos

Individual squares

Card

Stitched by: Kaz Bowen

Biography

Lucas was a perfectly healthy child at his birth and his early life. When he was 3 in 2022 he started getting bugs and fevers frequently. At first I thought this was because of him starting nursery, he was picking up a lot of bugs, but then he began to have episodes where he was unable to walk and was crying out in pain regularly.

I took him to urgent care due to him being unable to walk in April. He was transferred to A&E then the children's ward and we were released the next day and told that he had growing pains (transient synovitis). This happened again in May when I took him to urgent care 2 days in a row as I was so worried about him.

The doctors investigated whether it was an infection in his bone and concluded that it wasn't and sent us home. They asked us to come back and have an appointment with a consultant with expertise in bones the next day which we did. I was told my son was just choosing not to walk and was having growing pains.

My son had previously had a blood test and a doctor had phoned and said there were a couple of things wrong with Lucas's bloods and that he needed to go back for another test. We took him for the test and we're just now waiting for the results. We tried to carry on as normal as we could at home. After a week my son was still becoming ill frequently and having a lot of temperatures so I rang the GP and told him I wasn't going to stop phoning until my son was either better or someone saw him as I was so worried. The GP then rang me back a few minutes later and told me Lucas had low iron and was going to be referred to haematology as he had mild anaemia. After this we were just waiting for Lucas's appointment to come through.

After a few more weeks of struggling on Lucas became really distressed one night in a lot of pain and crying and having fevers. My husband took him to urgent care where he was transferred to A&E then the children's ward where they kept him in to do some tests to see what was causing the joint pain. They said to prepare to be there for about a week.

The next morning a doctor came in and explained that the 3 types of blood cells were all low and getting lower for Lucas and that this caused concern that he had cancer. After that be started antibiotics and was transferred to the RVI where all the children in the north go for cancer treatment. Over the next few days Lucas had tests on his bone marrow and it was confirmed that he had acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. He started having steroids and chemotherapy straight away. At the end of the induction phase he had a test on his bone marrow which showed that he still had minimal residual disease so he was changed to the strongest regimen kf chemotherapy. He continued to have intense chemotherapy for 9 months with bursts of steroids throughout. He then entered maintenance stage and is now in cycle 3 and doing really well although he still has a long way to go. His hair is back and is growing like crazy and he is enjoying spending some time at school now.