Joseph

Meet Joseph my eldest son, born 16th Feb 2010. The oldest of my two sons, the bravest little boy I've ever encountered; I'll explain ....

Around his 2nd birthday he developed what we thought was a virus/bug that was going round the area affecting small children and toddlers the like, following that came the high nighttime fever with his temperature going sky high, which entailed the late night visits to A&E of which the doctors could come up with a viral infection going round ??
A few weeks later a better Joseph and parents decided to get him down to the local funfactory to play a bit of football of which we noticed him limping a bit and not weight bearing one of his legs, his right one if I remember ? We rushed him to A&E again and the doctors did their routine checks, ultrasounds and X-rays etc plus a blood test to see what was causing his discomfort.

Then we received the news no parent should ever have to hear, the blood test revealed irregularities in his cell counts and they couldn't rule out the possibility of them being cancerous .
Off to QMC in Nottingham it was for more in depth investigations ! Thus revealing the diagnosis of ALL, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and joes treatment was to start immediately !

We are now nearly 9 months into Joseph's treatment and all is going to plan, in remission and on low risk treatment/maintenance, our journey continues for the next 3 years with his battle against this dreadful illness.
This photo taken around joes 2nd birthday is one that haunts me then and still will to the day I die, such a happy smile but the unknown illness had already begun and there was nothing we could have done or noticed to prevent it all happening :(