In June 2022, Lucas was about 14 months old. He started sleeping a lot more than normal and kept running a low-grade fever that was out of the ordinary for him. we thought he was teething or had a small virus that just made him feel bad, but it kept up, we called his primary care doctor and scheduled a check up. Lucas‘s dad took him in and his doctor checked him over and said he thinks he has a small virus that’s just gonna need to run its course. He advised us that if Lucas didn’t get any better to bring him back but just keep giving him fluids. After few days, we noticed he seem to be sleeping more and never wanted to play, smile, laugh, or any other things normal toddlers his age do.

We called and scheduled him another appointment. We scheduled his appointment for that following Monday, July 5. His dad and I both were able to take him which was unusual for us because normally we trade off taking them but Josh’s mom decided to get the others for the day, so it just kinda worked out.

We went to lunch before his appointment and he was eating a little, dancing in his seat and playing more than we had seen in a while, so we talked about maybe canceling this checkup since he was showing signs of feeling better. We decided to go ahead and stick with it because something had seemed so off with him the days before.
At the doctors office we were able to see his regular pediatrician.

The nurse came in and got his blood. After a few minutes she came back and seemed kinda off to us. She said something along the lines of “I’m gonna get a little more blood, but I think our machine might be broken, I’ve never seen numbers this high” we kinda immediately were both on alert, but still had no clue. After a few mins, she came back with a couple more nurses, and they wanted to get more blood. I just remember them all trying to get blood from his little feet because his fingers weren’t giving much.
They left the room and a few minutes later his pediatrician walked in. Later we both talked about how we immediately knew he was about to tell us something bad because of his face.

He told us he thought Lucas might have leukemia.

Surely he said that wrong? That’s definitely not the right word, was my immediate thought’s. I felt a shock so deep I don’t think I could ever describe it accurately.
Nothing I have ever done before or since has been as hard as continuing to stand up straight and walk out of that doctor’s office that day.
Dr. Slade talked to us about what that might mean, and our options. He advised us to go straight to the hospital, but asked about which hospital we wanted to go to.
We left and went straight to the Beverly Knight Olsen Children’s hospital in Macon, Georgia.

They got us checked in on the second floor which later became like a second home to us.

Everything seemed to move crazy fast but also way too slow after that. We met with an oncologist and he explained all the test and procedures and they got started pretty quickly. Within 2 days (July 7, 2022) we got his official diagnosis. T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. He discussed options as far as the different hospitals he could be treated at and what that meant (some were set protocols and some were doing trials) once we decided on having him treated him Macon, they immediately scheduled his port placement surgery, Lumbar punctures and started chemotherapy.

Since then, Lucas has been put to sleep for Lumber Punctures than I can possibly remember and had so many different types of chemotherapy infusions along with oral chemotherapy tablets at home and numerous rounds of steroids and antibiotics.

Lucas has been such a trooper thru this entire process. He is such an amazing happy 3 year old boy and if you didn’t know it already, hanging with him, you would never guess he is battling Leukemia.

He is currently in remission, and in the maintenance phase of his treatment plan.

His last chemo date is November 17, 2025!

Lucas loves superheroes, but he doesn’t know he’s the bravest superhero of them all!