Julian’s fight for life

What is the worst thing that someone can say about your child? For us, it came on February 19, 2020- “Your child has cancer.” Just like that, our world got flipped upside down after taking our 6-month-old son Julian to the ER for spiking fevers and constipation. Pretty standard right? As his mother, I knew something wasn’t right, but I wasn’t expecting to hear that he had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Terrified, we also had to get Julian’s fraternal twin, Jayden tested, but fortunately, he is healthy but will have to continue to get tested yearly. My heart and world stopped, all the “hows, when, where, why’s” are unanswered but what remains true is that our 6-month son Julian has been at Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, in Chicago fighting for his life and there’s nothing we can do for him. We have experienced our son stop breathing in front of us, suffer a number of seizures that have lasted up to 17 minutes and being sedated and paralyzed for his safety. A CT scan was conducted and found that Julian had blood on the front right and front left sides of his brain. 3 blood transfusions, Steroid treatments, and a few Platelet transfusions later, the doctors were able to start Chemo. As a parent, you hope and pray for the best and don’t want to think about the worst case. Although Julian is clearly in pain and needs to be sedated to help him tolerate all the procedures, all you can do is trust the doctors and watch it happen. I couldn’t imagine that things becoming worse, but they did. We recently found out Julian has 2 different forms of Leukemia, this is apparently rare in children, but now we also have to worry about treating his Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Before I could even start to wrap my head around this diagnosis we were informed that his confirmed diagnosis is Mixed Phenotype Acute Leukemia (MPAL), is a very rare type of leukemia where more than one type of leukemia occurs at the same time. Julian’s fight is a long one and our family needs all of the support and prayers that we can get. Please pray for our son Julian. #prayingtillJuliancomeshome #Greenteam