This is Joels story..

Joel was a typical 15 year old boy, enjoyed playing rugby, going kickboxing and hanging out with his mates.

When he started complaining of headaches, flu like symptoms, swollen gums and no energy we knew there was a problem.

After 5 weeks, 3 trips to the doctors and being fobbed off with "it's a virus" " it's sinusitis" "it's glandular fever" blood tests came back and my world crumbled....

Joel was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (aml) I was gutted.

 

June 3rd 2013 will never be forgotten, we were admitted into bch for chemo, 4 rounds of chemotherapy lots of ups and downs, bone marrow biopsy's, lumber punctures, mri scans and lots more were carried out over the next few months but on the 4th November we were given the news we desperately wanted to hear....

 

Joel was in remission :)  

 

Two weeks, our happiness was short lived.  Lumps were appearing on Joel's body but because his bloods were fine nobody suspected cancer. How wrong we were.  In dec a biopsy was done and it was confirmed it had returned and quickly...not only was his bone marrow 80% full of leukaemia he now had it in both testes and leukaemia deposits in the skin so back to bch we went. That's where we remained over Xmas, we are now due bone marrow transplant and radiation treatment.

Joel underwent more chemo before he was set for his full body radiotherapy...  this was a weeks worth of treatment.  He didnt complain.. Just held his head high and did what he needed to do.

 

His bloods were good, and so he was ready for his transplant.  

 

After the transplant - it was just a matter of waiting to see if his body accepted the bone marrow.   But his body was tired.  After all the effort and fight Joel had given - it was too much.

 

Although he was 100% doner, which means to you and me - he beat the cancer.. Joel passed away after 1 week into an induced coma.  20th March 2014  - we all lost him.