Ashton’s Journey with T Cell ALL
Ashton Epthorp had just celebrated his 6th birthday with his family in June of 2022. He was an active country kid who loved all things tractors and machines. He became run down with a cough late August and after a trip to the doctor and an X-ray he was diagnosed with atypical pneumonia. He started antibiotics and was kept home from school. We noticed excessive bruises on his legs but we put them down to falls as he was learning how to ride his bike without training wheels at the time.
Unfortunately by early September he didn’t improve after a full course of antibiotics the doctors thankfully told us to go straight to emergency (over an hour and 40 mins away). The doctor in Emergency was ready to send Ashton home but thought to do bloods and an X-ray as a precaution. The X-ray showed a complete white out of his left lung (still thought to be fluid) which meant his was admitted to the Children’s Hospital. The next day we learned the devastating news that it was not pneumonia that was making our son sick. He had T Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and the X-ray was really showing a large cancerous mass that was caused by the leukaemia, which was pushing on his heart and beginning to cut off his airway. We had caught it just in time! His blood was 68% blasts at the time of diagnosis and he was too unwell to undergo any surgery under general anaesthetic so he has to complete a lumbar puncture under only light sedation to confirm the horrible reality: it was cancer.
After 3 days in paediatric Intensive Care and a 12 day stay after initial diagnosis, Ashton was discharged to outpatient treatment.
He completed 5 rounds of high dose chemotherapy and thankfully he reached remission on the 6th of January 2023!
He had many ups and downs throughout treatment: having to live away from home for the past 10 months in order to be close enough to his treating hospital in case of emergency, having a central line placed so that he could receive chemotherapy, teaching himself to take tablets at the age of 6, a total of 76 days in patient for fevers, side effects and treatments, 14 surgical procedures in under a year, separation from his younger sister and welcoming his youngest sister into the family in November of 2022.
Despite all these challenges and milestones Ashton has shown so much resilience in how he has handled treatment and how he bounces back after every round.
Today Ashton is in maintenance treatment which requires him to take daily chemotherapy tablets and he is currently waiting for his 15th procedure to have his central line removed. This will allow Ashton to return home to the country, get back to school with his friends and continue to fight leukaemia with regular Oncology appointments and medications!
