DATE OF BIRTH:  December 12th, 2004                ILLNESS: Neuroblastoma Stage 4 (Cancerous tumour in stomach)

June 16, 2007 ~ Update on Chad’s progress.

I thought I'd write and give you & the stitches an update on Chad's progress; He is currently in an isolation ward at Westmead Children's hospital, (I will try to forward you a photo of him with his lovely quilt) where he will be for the next few weeks, he began his high dose chemo therapy on 4 June, 2007 and had his bone marrow transplant on 12 June 2007 he is now is right in the thick of the horrible side effects of the high dose chemo.

He is having regular blood and platelet transfusions, huge dose of drugs; pain killers, anti nausea, anti fungal, which are causing other problems such as rashes and skin irritations, he is not eating or drinking and is being fed intravenously directly into his blood stream, he has mucositis (ulcers) which spread through his entire body from his mouth, throat, tummy and down to his bottom, the only way to excrete the mucus which seeps from these open wounds is to vomit which he is doing constantly, he has extreme body aches and muscle pain and pains in every bone in his body. Adam or I find ourselves massaging him for hours on end in an attempt to relieve some of his pain as the pain relief is not strong enough but due to his age he cannot have with any higher doses.

 The doctors did tell us about these side effects prior to admission, but to see your child suffer like this is just heartbreaking, as a parent you feel some of the pain, but want to relieve all of the pain and it is so difficult to see anyone especially a small child go thru this torture, the doctors have told us this is his only chance of survival so we must keep going......people ask how do we do it? and we reply "we just have to"

Please keep Chad in your thoughts

Regards,

Julie, Adam, Chad & Bree Layton

      BIOGRAPHY   

 Chad was born a happy and healthy baby, he had never been sick until about 4 weeks before his 2nd birthday. He had been a bit whingy and had a chest infection that he could not get over. After about 3 weeks of antibiotics he still wasn't getting any better,and was looking quite pale and we also noticed that his tummy seemed "a bit swollen".

Our life came crashing down on Chad's 2nd birthday 12/12/06 we noticed his tummy was "rock hard". We took him to the Children's hospital at Westmead for an ultrasound and in about 1 hour we were told Doctors had found a massive tumour about the size of a grapefruit in Chad's tummy and they think it is cancer. We were absolutely devastated, we could not believe it, this was a happy healthy kid who had never been sick how could a 2year old get cancer? Is he going to die? The Doctors could not guarantee anything.

We were immediately admitted to hospital and have been in and out of hospital ever since December 2006, the first night being Chad's 2nd birthday. Since then Chad has endured 6 rounds of Chemotherapy, a 6 hour operation in an attempt to remove the tumour (Doctors had remove Chad's right kidney and right adrenal gland during surgery) countless blood & platelet transfusions, CT scans, bone scans, kidney, heart, eye and hearing tests.

 He has been in hospital for 10 days now with his white bloods cells (imunity)at zero level. Our next step is an extremely high dose chemo in about 3 weeks, and Doctors have told us some Children do not survive this chemo as their little bodies cannot take all the toxicities, we can only hope and pray our little man makes it thru, we will be in hospital for about 6 weeks as he will also receive a stem cell / bone marrow transplant and then radiation treatment. We also have a little baby girl Bree who was only 3 months old when Chad was diagnosed, she is our little angel and keeps us all happy when we are feeling down :)

Written by Chad’s parents.