For the love of Daniel

Daniel was never a sickly child but in the year 2000, he started being so. At first he was diagnosed with a mild case of mumps which cleared up after a course of medication.

All was well for a few days till we received a phone call from his school saying he was very unwell and can we go and collect him.

At first we didn’t noticed the subtle changes in him such as tiredness, which is one of the many symptoms of Leukaemia. Then his gums went very red and swollen. We took him to our GP who said he looked anaemic and arranged for a routine blood test at our local Hospital.

We had a phone call later that day asking for us to go back to the GP’s surgery as they have found some abnormality in his blood. Call it mothers instinct or intuition but I just knew it was bad.

How bad? I didn’t know till we took him back to our local Hospital.

When we heard the word `Leukaemia` our world froze. All that kept going through my mind was `cancer`, he is too young to have cancer.

There are different types of Leukaemia and we now had to find out which type Daniel had. More tests told us he had AML (Acute Myeloid Leukaemia)....the rapid sort.

By this time, we were at the Children’s Hospital. A lot was explained to us but as you can imagine, it was a blur.

This was the first day of many, consisting of tests and treatments. All I could see was a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. One minute we were just a normal loving family the next, our whole world had been turned upside down.

Over the next six months or so, we were in and out of Hospital. In, having Chemotherapy, home for a while, back in with a temperature. In between, out patient’s appointments, blood and platelet transfusions and after every course of Chemotherapy, he had to have a Lumber Punch were fluid is took from the spinal column to determine how many if any, Leukaemia cells are present.

All was going as well as could be expected. A bone marrow transplant was being planned. He finally went into remission and a donor was found. A bone marrow transplant was arranged for December (can’t remember the exact dates).

He went to have another Lumber Punch, then the bad news…he had relapsed.


He was allowed further blocks of Chemotherapy and if he went into remission, the Bone Marrow transplant would go ahead. But further Lumber Punches told us otherwise. With the last block of Chemotherapy he was allowed, there was a 10% chance of it working and this could also kill him. What choice did we have? either way he was going to die but we knew, if we did not allow this chance of it working, we have to live with it for the rest of our lives.

The treatment went ahead and then the final Lumber Punch.....it hadn’t worked. Our only child was going to die. All we could do now was to make his last few months the best we could.

We took him to Disneyland in Paris with the help of friends and family who helped raise the money for us.

He was very brave, and strong painkillers kept him going. He even celebrated his 10th Birthday on Valentine's Day.

Come March he was still going strong, it was so hard to believe there was anything wrong with him but come the 14th, we had a bad night with him and were thinking of having him admitted.

On the 15th, we knew he was deteriorating fast...it was only a matter of time.

2.30 PM, he passed quietly away.



We love and miss you so much darling, rest in peace till we meet again.

Mom and Dad

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