Ethan's medical Fund

Ethan started out mid August with some stomach aches. Just starting 1st grade, we thought it was just a bug from school. A few weeks went by and the pain continued to worsen, he was sleeping a lot, didn't want to go outside and play and his eating decreased a whole ton, if you know Ethan, he eats all the time so that was a huge red flag. One night the pain was so bad and he was screaming in his sleep so we took him to our local Children's Hospital that is only about 20 minutes from us. They gave him Tylenol, took an x-ray and said it was constipation. We knew better as he is a regular kid but they said with 100% certainty that is what it was. After being on Mirilax for a week and the pain getting worse instead of better, we went to our family Dr. He gave us a referral to a GI. He did do one blood test to make sure it wasn't an issue with Gluten but tested nothing else. We, called the GI to make an appointment and he couldn't get us in for 4 weeks! A few nights after that Ethan found blood in his stool, started throwing up and was screaming in pain so we came out to the main Children's Hospital in Aurora. Ethan's oxygen fell very quick and seeing all the doctors rush in our room was very scary and made it real that there was really something wrong. They ordered blood work, XRay, Cat Scan, etc and did an overall exam. They found a lump just below Ethan's pants line that was a cause to rush the tests and they quickly found the mass. Within a few hours we knew that life was changing and that Ethan had cancer. Over the next few days it was a lot of testing, tumor biopsy, spinal taps, bone marrow biopsy, and plenty of exams. Finally it was determined that Ethan had Burkitts Lymphoma Cancer in his abdomen. This is a very rare cancer and pretty scary. Good news was the cancer had not spread to his bone marrow or his spinal fluid, bad news was that this 4 inch tumor had grown in 24 hours to consume his whole torso, it wrapped around all of his organs, up and around his lungs and growing still very quickly. They diagnosed him as stage 3 and started chemo immediately. We have now been in Children's hospital for just over a week (got here Monday Oct 6th) and the cancer is finally starting to show some signs of slowing down. The latest pet scan shows that it has shrunk a lot so that is very encouraging. I know we have a long road ahead of us but with the help of family and friends and prayer I know we will get Ethan through this.