BiographyOn the 12th January 2025, we were given the devastating news that our little boy Oliver, who was just two at the time was being diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Oliver’s symptoms came on really quickly, and they all could have easily been something else - he had had the sniffles on and off, but it was winter and he was at nursery. He had a couple of new bruises but again, he was two years old and constantly on the go. It was only when a strange pin prick rash appeared that was spreading fast, that we took him to A&E to be examined.
The last thing we ever expected to hear was that it was cancer.
We left straight away for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital for Oliver to be admitted as an inpatient and to start chemotherapy.
That first night was traumatising, his little veins were too small to place a cannula and after many, many failed attempts throughout the night the decision was made to stop, and to take him down to theatre the next day for long lines to be placed.
Just four days after he was diagnosed, I went into preterm labour with Oliver’s little sister, and had to leave Oliver at Alder Hey with his dad to carry on treatment to go for an emergency c-section.
Oliver developed a blood clot in February of last year as a rare side effect of one of his chemotherapies that hospitalised him for a week and rendered his port-a-cath unusable for months afterwards, meaning lots of long lines and added trauma and stress of having these constantly refitted.
Induction treatment was brutal, and he stopped speaking, and lost the ability to walk or even to stand from sitting. He endured a cocktail of different chemotherapies, blood and platelet transfusions and lots of lumbar punctures and trips down to theatre for intrathecal chemotherapy.
Oliver is now on maintenance chemotherapy, which consists of daily and weekly oral chemotherapy, and (hopefully) has around 11 months of treatment to go. He is doing really well, and makes us proud every single day. We hope Oliver will ring the bell in February 2027.
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