Thank you for supporting me and the more than 300,000 kids worldwide who will be diagnosed with cancer this year. By sharing the gifts of your time, talent and money with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, you're supporting research to give all kids with cancer a better chance for a cure.
On January 23rd of 2017, my 17 year old son was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer known as Osteosarcoma. This was a devastating blow to our family. I am the father of 7 beautiful children and I never imagined this could happen to us. I will explain a little of what we've been through thus far as best as I can. Taylor's plan consists of ten weeks of chemotherapy,surgery,and then twenty more weeks of chemotherapy. He has completed the pre-op chemo and is in his second week of post-op chemo. His operation was on May 9th of 2017, this operation consisted of resection of the bone mass in Taylor's left femur including a section of his femur bone. The removed piece of bone was replaced with a cadaver bone a metal plate and screws to hold it all together. This operation was successful. Taylor broke hospital records by walking with the help of his crutches just three days after this surgery. This is my son; strong and relentless-no surprise to me. On May the 14th Taylor, while still in the hospital, developed a fever of 103, his mother and my hearts sank,and based on the fever which was luckily brought down with a dose of Tylonal, the surgeon decided it would be best to open his leg back up and clean it, along with "sprinkling" antibiotics into the surgical site. He also decided to insert a antibacterial putty that dries into a cement rod into the cadaver bone. This was done by drilling a hole through his knee to the femur. He explained that the risks where minimal and that this is what he would do if it where his son. We agreed and on May the 16th, Taylor was again sent for surgery.After the second surgery, Taylor's left leg from the knee down was rendered useless. It is still unknown why or how this happened and it is still unknown if it will ever repair itself. They said that somehow his peroneal nerve was damaged or pinched maybe due to swelling from the surgery, they also said that the extreme pain he was feeling was a good sign that "the nerve will wake back up." The pathology report states that the chemo caused 95% necrosis of the tumor that was in his leg,this means that the chemo destroyed 95% of the cancer, this is great news and all of the margins were negative. We are now about a month and a half after surgery the pain is starting to subside and he still has no feeling in his foot and no control of his foot. This condition is called foot drop. This is my son who bravely accepted his condition and,even more, bravely took to his chemotherapy like a champ.
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