Andrew W. - Quilt Finished in 2005

Born: November 5, 2002

Illness: Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

Quilt was completely made by one stitcher, Betty.  She machine stitched all the squares, finished the quilt, and then sent it to Love Quilts for one of our children.  Thank you so much for all your hard work Betty, the quilt turned out beautifully!

Andrew W.'s Story

written by mom Heather

Andrew was born a healthy little boy in November of 2002.  A few days after going home after the emergency c-section because Andrew was a breech baby, I had noticed that Andrew had a webbed finger on the left hand between the middle and ring fingers.  So I brought it to our doctor’s attention.  He said we would keep an eye on it and then when he was about six months old we first went to see the orthopedics doctor in La Crosse Clinic.  He said that he would not do surgery at six months but bring Andrew back in a year and then he would look at his hand again.  So we waited the year and returned to La Crosse Clinic.  The doctor had said that it looked as if the webbing was growing with the finger and that it was our decision to have it repaired.  So on May 3, 2004 Andrew went in for his first surgery to have his fingers repaired.

A couple of weeks later Andrew had some low grade temps and went in for his 18 month well baby check on a Friday.  At this appointment he had no signs of any infections so our doctor sent us back to La Crosse Clinic to have the cast removed from his surgery to see if his hand was infected.  It was not infected so we returned home and continued with the day.  Well the next day came and his fevers started to increase and Andrew did not want to eat.  The fevers got to the point that I was giving him both Tylenol and Children's Motrin but nothing was helping the fevers go down.  So we made a trip the local ER and were sent home with some antibiotics.

The very next day May 17, 2004 Andrew was still not doing any better so I called the Clinic and made an appointment with his doctor.  We arrived at the clinic and while sitting there one of the nurses that took care of him on the previous Friday saw us sitting in the waiting room and came to see what was wrong.  She then went back to see if Andrew’s doctor could get him back soon.  We were then called back did the normal things weight, temp, etc.  Then when his doctor entered the room, he took one look at Andrew and talked with me about having me go over to the hospital as soon as possible. 

We went to the hospital and they drew blood and took chest x-rays.  And then finally we were taken to a room and admitted to the hospital.  The lab tests came back not so good all the counts of his CBC were very low.  We were told then by our doctor it could be a couple of different things and one was leukemia.

The next day came and still had no idea of what this was so our doctor started calling other hospitals and that is when he found Dr. Kahn at Rochester Mayo Clinic Pediatric Oncology group.  She had told our doctor to have us bring Andrew to Rochester.  We left Tomah on May 19, 2004 and went directly to Mayo Eugenio Litta Children's Hospital in Rochester, MN.  The following day Andrew went in for his first bone marrow extraction and to have a pick line placed to use for the IV.  On May 25, 2004 we were told that Andrew had Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.  He went the very next day and had is port-a-cath and started his chemo treatments.  A week later he went in for the second spinal chemo treatment and bone marrow. 

On Friday June 4, 2004 we were told that Andrew was already in remission.  That weekend we took Andrew home for the first time in 3 weeks.  We then returned the next weekend for a cough and two weeks from that with water retention so bad he was admitted for the weekend.  The following month was full of spinal taps every week because there was no detection of cells in the spinal fluid.  After the second month he was on interim maintenance which included two delayed intensification treatments.  Andrew eventually lost his hair.

In August of 2004 Andrew had a chemotherapy burn around his port because the port needle had come out when the injected the vincristine.   In March and April of 2005 he had 2 staff infections in his port line and ended up having the first port-a-cath removed and a new one placed in May of 2005.  Since then Andrew has went through the summer healthy and goes one a month for treatment to Mayo Clinic and also takes his oral medications at home continuously.  We hope that he will remain cancer free for many years.

Written by Andrew's mom Heather in October 2005