Power Play Against Leukemia
from Children's Magazine, Winter 2004
Story by Kristin Kelly
Photos by Tia Brayman
Sherilyn Cook still remembers the answering machine message like it was yesterday.
She and her husband, Steve, had just returned to their Loveland , Colo. , home on June 20, 2001, from Sherilyn’s birthday dinner. Sherilyn noticed the answering machine’s red light blinking: they had a message from their 15-year-old son, Adam, who had just left for summer camp in Nebraska two days before.
“He called to wish me a happy birthday,” she said. “Then he said he was turning yellow and green and that he had a headache. But then he said, joking, ‘Don’t worry, mom, because I’m not dying. I still see the light at the end of the tunnel.’ ”
The next day, Adam was diagnosed with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
'Kind of a Shock'
Four days before Adam left for camp, he was supposed to go to ice-hockey practice. Normally the Cooks would practically have to bar the door to keep Adam away from his favorite sport, but that day, Adam didn’t feel like playing.
“I had had a headache all week,” Adam said. “I thought I was getting a cold or the flu.”
The headaches continued at camp, but Adam thought nothing of them.
Then he started to turn yellow.
The camp nurse at first thought Adam had a virus or jaundice. But the next day, when he was still yellow (with eyes “green like a lizard’s,” Adam said), the nurse took him to a nearby hospital. His friend Chad came along.
“They did a bunch of tests on me,” Adam said. “Then they told me I had leukemia. It was kind of a shock.”
Dr. Edythe Albano, left, was Adam's primary
oncologist at Children's
Adam was diagnosed with ALL, a cancer that attacks lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells. Leukemic cells accumulate in the bone marrow, replace normal blood cells and can spread to other organs, including the lymph nodes and the central nervous system.
The Cooks got the bad news that evening.
“I hung up the phone and bawled and immediately prayed,” Sherilyn said.
The doctor told Sherilyn that Adam needed to be transferred to The Children’s Hospital because of its specialty in pediatric leukemia – the hospital treats 80 percent of kids in Colorado diagnosed with ALL.
Back at the hospital in Nebraska , the doctor pulled Chad aside and told him Adam could bleed to death before he got to Children’s.
“I don’t think I would come right out and tell a young kid ‘I don’t think your friend is going to make it,’” Sherilyn said. “I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. It didn’t make me angry because good results came of it but it really scared Adam. He literally thought he was going to die in three days.”
Adam needed to take Flight For Life to Children’s to get a blood transfusion right away. But the helicopter couldn’t fly in the rainy, stormy weather.
Adam would have to make the five-hour trip to Children’s in an ambulance instead.
A Long Road Ahead
Adam was still yellow from jaundice when he was
admitted to Children's in June 2001.
Sherilyn and Steve met the ambulance at Children’s at 2 the next morning. Adam was admitted to 5A, the oncology floor, to begin his treatment – treatment that would last three long years and three months. Treatment that would cause fit, athletic Adam to gain 40 pounds and lose most of his hair.
Children’s neuro-oncologist Nicholas Foreman, MD, was the first doctor the Cooks met. He talked to Adam, not his parents, Steve said.
“Before, no one talked to me,” Adam said. “At Children’s they did.”
“I don’t think that doctor has any idea the kind of peace he gave us that first night when he came in and talked to us,” Steve said. “It put us into a good place.”
Adam also met his primary doctor, Edythe Albano, MD, Children’s director of clinical oncology.
“Adam was jaundiced – his body wasn’t getting rid of bile normally – which is very uncommon in leukemia,” Dr. Albano said. “We couldn’t start some of his medicines right away because one in particular is gotten rid of in the bile.”
Adam’s blood count was consistent with the diagnosis of leukemia, Dr. Albano said – he had large numbers of abnormal white blood cells.
Even though ALL is the most common childhood cancer, it is uncommon at Adam’s age, Dr. Albano said. The most common age for ALL to present is 3. Just 2,500 children are diagnosed with ALL each year in the United States.
The first step was to give Adam platelets, which help blood clot.
Then Adam began the first of six phases of chemotherapy – induction, which lasts for four weeks. The purpose of this phase is to shrink the cancer and evaluate the response to drugs and other agents.
Dr. Albano prescribed a massive dose of the chemo therapy drug prednisone to put Adam into remission, and also surgically placed a mediport – a type of IV that stays in once the patient goes home – in Adam’s upper chest.
But not all Dr. Albano’s visits were clinical; one day, Adam remembers fondly, she told him to make a wish for something he wanted – a program through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
He promptly whipped out a tablet and started writing, Sherilyn said. He worked on this ever-changing list for the next two years. It was a much-needed distraction. Eventually, Make-A-Wish granted Adam’s wish for two mountain bikes for him and his beloved brother, Daniel.
“We didn’t know if he was going to make it through this,” Sherilyn said.
“So just in case I didn’t they got me lots of stuff,” Adam said.
Sherilyn said, “He said, ‘Hey, this cancer’s really cool!’”
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