Austin G. - Quilt Finished in 2008

Born: August 15, 1996

Illness: ALL Leukemia

Austin's Story

Written by Austin's mom in August 2007

Austin was born on August 15, 1996.  He is our second child and only boy out of four children.  Since birth Austin has shown us just how special and incredible he is.  By the age of 2, he could solve a 67 piece puzzle right out of the package and even with the pieces jumbled around!  By the age of 6, he was creating beautiful drawings and writing short stories.  He also started playing basketball and eventually joined a traveling basketball team and also played with another group at a local community center.  By the age of 9, he started playing the saxophone. He picked it up so quickly and played beautifully, that he was asked to play in a Jr. High School Jazz band and he was only in the 4th grade!

By December 2006, he had gotten a simple cold.  Antibiotics were prescribed and it went away for a while but quickly came back.  He also started complaining of infrequent stomach aches and headaches.  None which lasted long enough to be concerned.  He even had his yearly physical in February 2006 and was fine.

  Then, during his basketball season, he complained of shoulder pain.  We took him to his pediatrician, x rays were taken, no broken bones and the finding was “tendonitis”.  Austin also seemed to look more “under the weather”.  We were on our Spring Break family vacation and on our last day, he woke up with a side ache (left side).  He was in a heated pool the night before and we thought maybe he swallowed the water or slept wrong.  He seemed to get worse and since we were unfamiliar with the area and unable to contact our insurance, we drove all the way to our local Children’s Hospital.

On April 9, 2006 our son was diagnosed with leukemia.  Austin has been through many unexpected complications since his diagnosis.  A little over a month into treatment, he had severe pancreatitis, then two days later, his lungs collapsed and were filled with fluid, Austin ended up with a chest tube and had many blood and platelet transfusions.  Thankfully, he recovered from that ordeal.  However, he developed more complications and had two surgeries.  The first surgery was to drain cysts that had developed from his bout of pancreatitis.  That surgery was unsuccessful.  Another surgery was performed to remove three cysts and during that surgery they also removed his spleen and part of his pancreas.  Gratefully, Austin recovered from this and is still continuing his treatment at Children’s Hospital.