On May 7, 2019 Jake was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Jake was taken to the doctor about 6 times up until this point because he had an ear infection that wouldn’t go away and his eyes were getting puffier and puffier and wouldn’t seem to go away with allergy meds. Finally, we told his pediatrician (whom had been out on maternity leave to that point) that something wasn't right. She agreed. Within hours we were at the emergency room and met our oncologist, Doctor Sampson. She broke the news that there was a softball size tumor in his chest and that she believed it was some sort of Leukemia or Lymphoma.

A few days after Jake was diagnosed with t-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia our doctor expressed some concerns of 1) the type of cancer he has - it typically doesn’t "present" until kids are around 8, and 2) his immune system - when Jake was admitted to the hospital they did several checks into his immune system and his numbers were low to fight off infection and he didn’t respond or build antibodies to his vaccines. It was hard for them to determine if the leukemia was messing up his immune system or he had an underlying immune system issue. Our doctor decided to run some genetic testing.

Fast forward to July and a few days after we found out Jake was in remission we also got news that Jake has a rare genetic mutation called agammaglobulinemic. It is a dominant mutation (which usually means passed down from parents) but they were figuring that it was a random mutation because neither Matt nor I have expressed any immune system issues. There is very little research on this mutation which continued to leave doctors with the question: did this cause his cancer?

Agammaglobulinemic causes severe infections in children and usually starts presenting when they are about 1; it leaves people with the inability to fight off the infection because they have little to no b-cells in their immune system and the few studies that have been done show that at times it can lead to leukemia's or lymphomas. Doctors encouraged us that they felt moving forward with a bone marrow transplant now, versus later would be the best option.

Over the next few months Jake continued with standard chemo and the behind the scenes prep of a transplant occurred. A donor was found (we hope to meet him someday) and we were scheduled to be admitted to the hospital at the end of September.

Jake's actual transplant day was October 1, 2019. It all seems like a blur now, and all-in-all it went well. Lots of complications were had, but they were expected. Jake is still today recovering and battling complications but he is on the upward slope to recovery.

We are so grateful for the staff at Akron Children’s hospital and can never say enough good things about the physical support Jake has received and the emotional support our family has received. From the doctors to practitioners to nurses to social staff, we are beyond grateful for our new family. We are also thankful to be chosen for this opportunity to be the featured family for Jayani's Army. We spoke with Kim and Ajay Seth and the connection that us "cancer families" have is too close. We have spent numerous hours utilizing the resources that will be revamped and feel so very lucky that this organization is doing everything in their power to make it easy on us families.