Gloria and Rhys

"My son was diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks before his sixth birthday. We got the diagnosis over a phone call and our doctor told us to pack a bag, go straight to Children's hospital, and expect to be admitted"

"It's really hard to believe that a child could be diagnosed with cancer. That's the kind of news you expect to get about your parents or something, but never about your kid. At that moment, I remember the world was closing around me, like this numb tingly feeling just came all over me. The doctor was telling me my son had leukemia, and part of my brain refused to believe it"

"My five year old didn't understand what was going on. He knew that morning they poked him and drew blood and it really hurt, but it was just like a whirlwind. He was screaming and crying the whole time. They had to perform surgeries because his white and red blood cells were so low"

"Then there was a stream of doctors coming in to talk to me every day. They said this is what we're finding and this is what's going to happen and this is what you should prepare for, and as a parent I wasn't in the state of mind to process all that stuff. I wish they would have given me a stack of papers that just said read this in a month."

"I went to a couple support groups, and in a way it felt like I was grieving for my child there. You get to a point where you realize your child is never going to have the life they think they'll have. You think that right now, my child is turning six and I don't even know if he will live through that."

"When I look back there were signs he was sick before his diagnosis. For at least three months he was extremely tired and didn't have that much energy. I remember one time before his diagnosis we were walking to school together. We live really close to school, but Rhys kept asking me to stop for him. He couldn't even cross the road properly. I found out later that it was because he had so few red blood cells in his body"

"The thing about treatment for kids is that it hits them really, really hard. The doctors think that kids can bounce back, so the first nine months they pump drugs directly into their bloodstream. Actually for cancer they put a port in your chest that connects straight into a big vein inside your body. So you do this almost every day until hopefully every cancer cell is in remission."

"The side effects are unbelievable. He needed steroids after the first nine months because he was so weak. As he becomes an adult, he'll have to deal with liver damage, kidney damage, potential heart damage, permanent brain damage. It's one of those things that slowly causes your kid to deteriorate. I have one friend who's son can barely walk now because of treatment"

"Right now he has poor coordination. That's the main thing. He tripped down the stairs a while ago because his reflexes are so underdeveloped. He's not able to catch himself before he falls. It's supposed to get better after he gets off the drugs though"

"I think the scariest part was right after the diagnosis. It was realizing he could have died if we hadn't taken him to the doctor after he couldn't walk to school. What if we hadn't brought him in? What if we waited a week longer? I actually wanted to stall bringing him in because his birthday was coming up so soon. Imagine if I didn't take him"

"It feels like a scary movie sometimes. It's something you can't prepare for. We're nearing the end of his treatment and it sometimes feels like I'm paralyzed.

"There's not enough being done for childhood cancer. There's not enough being done for my son. We need more money to be put into finding cures that don't destroy their bodies. I want to cure my son's cancer without taking away his childhood"