Help Austin Fight Aggressive Leukemia

Our son, Austin Bradley, 29, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia with a KMT2A mutation on May 2, 2024. He was driving his 18 wheeler through Wyoming when he got pulled in for a random drug test. He’d been feeling awful for about 3 weeks and upon being seen by the people who administered the test, was told he looked unwell and an ambulance was called. He ended up at a local hospital where further testing pointed to some type of blood cancer diagnosis. He was told he needed specialized care, so he was transported by ambulance again to Denver, Colorado. Austin called me at this point saying, “Mom. They’re saying I have cancer.” I flew out the next morning to be with him. AML with his specific mutation is extremely aggressive and at the time of diagnosis it had only been present in his body for 2-3 weeks. Intensive chemo was started immediately and then after a month, he came home to Phoenix with us so he could start treatment locally at City of Hope with me as his full time caregiver. He went through several more rounds of consolidation therapy (chemo), multiple infections, infusions, blood clots, and inpatient hospital stays before finally going on to have a stem cell transplant on Halloween. What started out as three hospital visits weekly eventually tapered down to one appointment every other week by early April 2025. The transplant doctor recently told Austin he’d soon be back to living a full life and paying taxes again. We were thrilled! Repeated bone marrow biopsies up until this point showed no evidence of the cancer returning. On April 17, 2025, after feeling terrible for an entire week with migraines, vomiting, body aches on his entire left side and other symptoms, Austin was finally admitted to the hospital for neurological testing. An MRI showed evidence of leukemia which had metastasized to his brain. After back and forth diagnoses, and much more testing, we were told that not only was his central nervous system affected by the cancer’s spread, but the new bone marrow he’d received from a donor was also full of cancer cells. As you can imagine, we are numb, we are grieving, we are sad, we are overwhelmed. We are told there is a very small survival rate in cases like his. But he’s chosen to press on, fight through more chemotherapy treatments & radiation (and whatever else may come) in order to be one of those 10-30% who come out the other side. The road will be extremely difficult, he’ll get really sick again, and ultimately we don’t know if it will be enough. But Austin said it best this afternoon while we were praying together, “Help me to fully recover or if that’s not your plan, please help me to be able to go out in peace”. I have no words to describe how I feel about any of this. Many of you have asked previously if there is anything you can do for our family, besides prayers and well wishes. It was brought to my attention that this could be a way to allow others to help. All funds donated will go directly to Michelle Schroff (@waddellrunninglady) and her family to aid in expenses for Austin’s journey ahead. Be that insurance costs, medical expenses, prescriptions, transportation, groceries, or hard to talk about things that we aren’t going to talk about. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.