The day that changed our lives forever!

Hi, I'm Lynette. I live in Denver with my two sons, Jordan and James. Jordan is 7 and James 11. When Jordan was diagnosed with cancer, so many things rushed through my head. What about his future? And what about James? Nobody should ever have to live through what we did. Cancer isn't fair. It doesn't judge. My whole family history is completely clean of cancer, and on both sides! On the day Jordan was diagnosed, I learned that sometimes cancer doesn't care if your family had it or not. Cancer doesn't care how healthy you were during your pregnancy, or how carefully you raise your children. And it just comes out of nowhere. I am so thankful we caught it when we did and can't even think about what would happen if we listened to our doctor who implied it was "just an infection" and "not a big deal"...

Living this life has been rough. I know I was so blessed to have two healthy little ones but I couldn't have imagined it taking this path.

Jordan is now cancer-free! but every day we are just so scared that it'll come back. We are so watchful and so careful. But he needs to have a childhood too! He's a kid after all, just like his healthier friends. So where do you draw the line between being a parent and letting your kid be a kid? I think we're still figuring that out.

So anyway, that's where we are now. If there's any one piece of advice I could give, it's to listen to yourself. If you have a hunch or an instinct, listen to it. If I didn't listen to my instinct that Jordan wasn't doing well, who knows what could've happened, I don't want to think about it. To all the moms and dads out there with kids, just trust your own judgment. But don't forget to listen to others, too. As I said before everything is really about balance, and even just that is a struggle.

Well, here's how it went...

Seemingly out of the blue, I noticed one day that Jordan's neck was swollen. I also noticed he wasn't eating as much as he normally did and generally did not look good. I was nervous, but I also thought it could've just been a cold or something. He was so tired, almost like experiencing fatigue, which I've never seen in a 3 year old... I went straight to the doctor.

The doctor suggested it could be an infection of some kind, but I didn't feel right. I pressed for further testing to see if it could be anything else.

I could say I was in shock at the diagnosis but it was so much different than that. I felt empty. You never think something like this will happen to your family until one day, it does. Is a 3 year old supposed to know that they have cancer??? As a new mom, what was I supposed to do? I felt guilty, ashamed, scared. How was I supposed to tell the rest of my family?

Accepting diagnosis was extremely difficult and draining, to say the absolute least... but after everything sank in, I knew Jordan and I were gonna fight this!