Dawn Campbell is surrounded by her children Delando (left), Donte and daughter Dieandra at their home in Portmore, St. Catherine. In observance of 'Cancer Awareness Month' this week Staff Reporter Nordia Henry talks to Dawn Campbell, a mother, about how she has coped since her 14-year-old son Delando Campbell, was diagnosed with leukaemia last year. These are her words.
"LAST YEAR we went to St. Mary to have a New Year's family dinner but after the dinner, I left my son at his godmother's house in Linstead, St. Catherine and she called me to say that he was sleeping constantly and she didn't like it. So when school reopened, which was a week later, he said he was feeling weak and once was enough for me to take him to the doctor.
When I took him to the family doctor she said he was coming down with the flu and she prescribed some medications. After taking the medication he felt a little better but a week later he came home complaining about feeling weak again. Before this, I remember watching him one evening as he walked across the track. He looked droopy and slim like he lost weight. So I was concerned because he's an active child who's involved in community sports. When he came home I asked him why he was walking like that and he said he almost collapsed on the bus today because he was feeling week but I thought it was the side effects of the medication.
However the following Sunday I was not home but my husband called me and said, 'Delando has been sleeping from morning and I found two lumps under his arms'. When I spoke to my son, he said he wasn't feeling good. So the Monday morning I took him back to the family doctor and she examined him but then raised concerns about the fact that he had lost some weight plus she found five more lumps apart from the two we pointed out. She found one in his head back, two in his groin, one in his head top and one at his neck.
After this, she sent him to do an x-ray because of the cough. When she received the X-ray results she told me that a lump was in his chest that was making him cough so much. She later recommended me to the University Hospital and the doctor read the letter and re-examined him and told me that the lumps are called lymph nodes, so he had to do a CT scan. The scan I was told would cost $23,000.
I didn't know what was wrong so I was getting frustrated but after a while they told me that they couldn't do the scan because the lump is very large and he was wheezing. So they sent me to a kid's clinic in Papine, St. Andrew. When I went the doctor told me that the lumps can be a lot of different things and sent us home to do a thorough blood test and that everything would cost $8,000. The next day, which was the Wednesday, when I went back for the results, the doctor, asked my son to wait outside and told me to sit down. She then asked if I knew anything about sickle cell and I told her that someone in my husband's family have it so I knew how to deal with it. Then she asked if my son had sickle cell if I would deal with it and I said yes. After a little while she said, 'you are going to go back to where you are coming from (that is University Hospital)' and I asked her why. Then she said, 'I can't prepare you but this is as much as I can tell you, he has some form of cancer'.
IN DENIAL
I shook my head and said no, he doesn't have cancer. I mean no one in our family has ever had cancer so you can imagine how shocked I was. She told me she was sending him to do a haematology. I was familiar with the term because I knew that this had something to do with blood. She said, 'Yes, blood and cancer among other things'.
So I went to Dr. Houston Taylor and she told me that even though he was tested she had to do her own test all over to make a diagnosis and also a bone marrow test. So he had to do the blood test all over again but the bone marrow results wouldn't be available until the next day so I went home dismayed again. I was so torn up that on my way back from the hospital, my girlfriend who accompanied me ran a red light because we were distracted by Delando's illness.
The next day the doctor asked to speak to me alone. She told me, 'Don't worry. Do you know Leukaemia?' I told her I only see documentaries about it on television but never heard of anyone or known anyone who has it. And she said, 'Well that's what he has. He has it through the blood. The red cells are low and the white cells are dominant so he's got nothing to fight and that's why he's experiencing the weakness.' They admitted him at the hospital the same day. Where the break down came for me was when I got the prescription. The doctor told me the medication was expensive but she never told me how much. So you know your child is sick and you have $9,000 and you want to ensure that he gets everything prescribed.
When I went to the pharmacy, the pharmacist told me that they don't carry these medications I have to go through the distributor and she recommended MediGrace. When I went to MediGrace, the person who was assisting me asked if I need everything on the prescription so I said yes. After a while she came back and said, 'mother I see you are running $64,000'. My knees started shaking and I collapsed and started crying because I was shocked. There were eight items on the prescription but I had to buy two doses for $4,500 each and most of the medications were injections because he has it through the blood.
The toll that my son's sickness took on me was enormous because I suffered two heart attacks and spent six days in the hospital while he was there too. At one point my husband had to run from the Haematology section to where I was. The doctors wondered why it happened but after a while they discovered that it was caused from stress.
HELP POURING IN
We had to stop the building of the house, empty bank accounts and when that failed, we turned to his school, Kingston College and they have done a million things for him. They have put on a fair to raise funds for him, Kingston College Old Boys' Association gave money, doctors flew down medication for him at one time when he couldn't get it here. Even Dr. Tracy-Ann Moodie, my family doctor also helped me. One time I wanted some medication and the cost was $35,000 and she just wrote the cheque. Also Dr. Cedric Lazarus, a veterinarian from the Ministry of Agriculture and Dawn Hamilton as well as other doctors have helped us tremendously. They are all very loving and supportive of Delando.
Since last December, my son has to go to the doctor each month and receive medication which costs about $15,000 every month. I've done research on the disease so I know more about it, which makes me better able to deal with it. It's a disease which sometimes may seem to have left the body but traces of it is still there. When I read about some of the contents found in the medication and wasn't strong enough, I wouldn't give it to him because it blasts both the good and bad cells but sometimes it messes up other things.
I think Chemotherapy tears you down rather than help you but my son's illness has brought me closer to my children, more like the over protective parent. So, as something is wrong you want to run.
Sigma has been approached by a lot of people with similar conditions so they are trying to build a unit at the Hospital in order to provide better facilities for Leukaemia patients and help with medication. The proceeds from the Sigma Run that was held last weekend, will go towards helping my son and I'm very grateful. I go to church more often and pray a lot. Talking about it has also helped me to deal with it better."
