Oakland's Battle!

My 6-year-old nephew Oakland has gotten very sick. As his family waits on tests, the Dr's have given him a presumed diagnosis of aplastic-anemia. A life-threatening blood disease, that only affects 1 to 2 in a million people. This disease has made it so that Oakland's bone marrow is unable to produce sufficient new blood cells for the needs of his body. Particularly worrying right now is that his white blood cell count is so low that his immune system is impaired. This essentially means that his body is not able to heal from, or fight off, infections without medical intervention. It’s a very scary and very dangerous diagnosis. Normal treatment and potential cure would come from a bone marrow transplant and/or chemotherapy, but this has been delayed pending results from genetic testing. If the anemia has a genetic component the treatment will be different. While we wait, Oakland will require blood testing and transfusions frequently... the Dr's say up to three times a week. It is going to be very difficult for Dylan and his partner Leah, to manage their challenging schedule with work, responsibilities, and co-parenting their other children.

Eventually, when the treatment is available, Dylan and Leah will have to find a way to balance their lives and responsibilities on the Island with weeks or months of treatment for Oakland on the Mainland. All of Oaklands treatment will be at the BC Children’s hospital in Vancouver. These expenses, combined with regular ferry trips and travelling expenses, and exacerbated by missed time at work and lost earning potential, are going to add up fast and become very difficult to manage for Oakland’s family.

I am asking Oakland’s friends and family, and anyone else who reads this, to share and contribute to this GoFundMe to support a very sick 6-year-old boy and his family during this horrible time. This way they are able to focus completely on his needs and those of his brother and bonus siblings and not to worry about the financial burdens caused by missed work and mounting responsibilities. No parent should ever have to decide between going to work to earn money or being with their sick child in the hospital. As a father myself, that thought is a crushing one. With help from good people like you, we can keep this from being this family’s reality.

*** edit, Oakland's mom has asked to be removed from this GoFundMe and Dylan and leah have taken over the managing of the updates and the page.

Thank you Josh, and Susan, for your efforts in writing and managing the page up to this point, we appreciate everything you have done to help support our family through this unknown and scary time.

As the spirit of the GoFundMe was created by Josh, it has only been updated with more accurate and up-to-date information regarding Oakland's diagnosis and treatment. The original formating will not be changed. Going forward all updates will be made by Dylan or Leah.

If anyone feels they have been misled please get in contact and we will make things right.***

*** Important edit***. When this page was first created, I received an email from a Dr, asking to get our pharmacare number sorted out because the cost of some of the preventive medication for managing oaklands symptoms would be very expensive, after speaking to my insurance company I found that Oakland's drugs were not going to be covered. With this knowledge I panicked and begged Josh to help start a gofundme for Oakland. Since then as the future has become more clear, we now know that the government and other programs will help by covering the costs of these medications. So the cost of medications has been removed from the original GoFundMe campaign.***

*** Important edit*** at this time Oakland is waiting on a official diagnosis, there are several blood cultures out at labs being examined right now, until the pannels have returned (about 2 weeks from June 19th) the two theorys we have been presented are either aplastic-anemia or fanconi-animea, either way we have bone marrow failure, and low white and red bloodcells. The difference will be treatment.