Support Owen’s cancer journey…round 2

This is Owen, he was born in August 2020 at 27 weeks weighing 1lb 3oz. His little lungs weren’t ready yet so he was on a ventilator for the first 2 months, which is when he transferred from their home in Flagstaff to Phoenix Children’s hospital 2 hours away. He remained there for another 8 months, during this time he had a big heart surgery, required ecmo for a couple weeks and a bunch of other hard things but he made it home 2 months before his first birthday. He was finally able to meet his brothers for the first time too since it was during Covid and no other visitors were allowed at the hospital.

Things were going pretty good until April of 2023, he was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma and started chemo right away. Chemo really wiped him out, he was in the hospital more than not. In July of last year we found out that he would need a liver transplant, and wasn’t a candidate at Phoenix children’s due to how complicated it would be. After a lot of back and forth to Stanford hospital in Northern California he was put on the transplant list, eventually going to Stanford in September to stay at the Ronald McDonald house to wait for transplant. October 26th Owen was gifted a liver, he had quite a few complications after and remained in icu at Stanford until mid December. He was then able to start chemo again, he needed two rounds post transplant to make sure there was nothing left. He was finally discharged on Christmas Eve but returned a few days later with RSV. He spent a couple more weeks in the hospital, then was able to discharge back to the Ronald McDonald house until Stanford felt it was safe for him to go back to Arizona. He returned to Phoenix children’s the end of January to complete his last round of chemo. Things were going pretty well, but in June on the day he was scheduled to have his port removed his cancer detecting labs had trended up. This lead to a repeat scan in July where it was found that the cancer had returned to his new liver. In August he spent 3 weeks in the hospital after they did a resection of the tumors on his liver, they thought they had removed all the cancer. During his stay his labs showed his numbers were on the rise again, this led to another PET scan, there was more cancer on the liver. He started a new regimen of chemo a few days later, the day before his 4th birthday.

At this point Owen is not a candidate for another transplant. He will do chemo, have his labs monitored, then more scans after a couple weeks to see how he’s responding to treatment. He’s already been in the hospital almost the entire month of August and started September with an admission due to the effects of chemo. We have to drive to Phoenix for every appointment which is 2 hours one way, this makes things difficult for working. We both work at the hospital in Flagstaff as zero budgeted nurses to work around Owen’s schedule, but with this type of position we are not able to earn PTO or have extra benefits like FMLA. Anything you can do to share or donate would definitely be appreciated. We’ve had to do this in the past and it really helped with travel expenses and missed days of work, it also allowed us to be together for those hard days in the hospital. Thank you for all your love and support!