Childhood Cancer Warrior: Lexand
As told by his mom, Kerry
February 22, 2023 is a date we as a family of 5 will always remember, Lexand, our 16-year-old high school very athletic boy, went to the doctor after battling several rounds of sickness, we thought maybe mono, strep throat, several bouts of ringworm from wrestling, and severe tiredness. He was just finishing up Wrestling season, he played Football, plays Baseball was on his way to start track when the doctor decided to do a blood test because he looked really pale. She immediately came back in the room and stated he needed to go to the Children’s Hospital in Omaha and probably get a blood transfusion. I was completely baffled and thrown off, she told me blood numbers which I had no clue what they meant and he had to be taken by ambulance because that day we had an ice storm. I called my husband and before he could get home from work Lexand had left for Omaha and we left shortly after.
He received a blood transfusion right away, but they could not find a diagnosis from doing blood work and had to do a bone marrow biopsy, on February 24, 2023 we got the news NO parent wants to hear that your child has cancer and Lexand was diagnosed with AML Leukemia. Immediately my thoughts went to why, how, what did we do wrong? How are we going to pay for this? School? Will he survive? Lexand had recently lost his aunt in her battle with colon cancer. How sick is he going to get? It’s so much! We talked about treatment. He had six cycles of chemo treatments, each cycle lasted a different number of days, with the longest being 10 days of treatment every 12 hours. These treatments would completely wipe out his immune system and make him highly susceptible to other infectious diseases. He would then have to spend a couple of additional weeks in the hospital while his immune system was recovering and closely monitored him. He ended up spending around 225 days in the hospital since his diagnosis. The sicknesses that he dealt with, a brain bleed, pancreatitis, tons of fevers, even central line infection, and spending time in ICU being intubated with a severe lung infection for which Initially confused the doctors on what the problem actually was. During his time in the ICU, the cardiologist and doctors lung doctors diagnosed him with a heart condition, called SVT, which causes his heart to beat extremely fast for no reason at all. So in October, after being discharged for his chemo treatments, and a few weeks to recover, he had heart surgery to correct the problem with his heart. He still has a long road ahead yet with monthly blood checks for a year, then every 3 months for a year and so on, for life. But he made it!
During his stay at the hospital, he missed his 16th Birthday, 4th of July, his entire summer, and spending time with his friends and family. He missed his Sophomore last quarter of school and Junior year first quarter of school and is now back at school but only doing 3 classes a day. He is also going to physical therapy three times a week to help build back all the muscle mass he lost laying in bed for almost 8 months. He isn’t doing any sports as of yet, but is planning on joining the Legion Baseball team this year, he missed the entire baseball season last year and that is his favorite sport.
After his first Chemo treatment, he did get the exciting, wonderful news that he was in remission! We couldn’t have gotten through this without the entire Oncology team at Children’s of Omaha, they are a godsend to our child and us, the entire hospital and nurses, case workers, just everyone there helped us get through this.
Then there’s Sky High for Kids, Brittany Franklin, she is a true hero, what she does for kids like ours is beyond reproach and not just in Texas but all over, like this Nebraska kid, who loves the Cowboys.
The Baker Family
