Dylan was born on the 15th December 2001, what a joy to have.
As the time went by he was coming up to 10mths old and things didn’t look right with Dylan he wasn’t eating or drinking and he always ate a lot he was a big baby for his age. Dylan had a lump on his forehead and his eye swelled up, we took him to the doctors but they keep telling us he had an infection in his eye and he had banged his head which would go down in a few days, well a week later it hadn’t and his eye was so bad that he couldn’t open it. He was taken back to the doctors on the Friday (25th October) who then decided to send him the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital at teatime and after many doctors looked at him they decided to keep him in for observation and told us he would be home tomorrow. Well as we arrived at the hospital Saturday morning we were about to be told a parents worst nightmare.  We weren’t allowed to see Dylan until the doctor had seen us, she took us in a room sat us down and told us the blood test they took last night came back early this morning and they were 99.9% sure Dylan had leukaemia.  They had arranged transport for us to be taken to Birmingham children’s hospital.  Our lives were turned up-sided down it felt as though everything we had, had been put in a box turned upside down moved from side to side and tipped back out again. We arrived at Birmingham thinking we are about to lose the most important thing in our lives, by 8.00pm that night we were told Dylan had A.M.L and he would have to face 6 months of high dose chemo. That night we couldn’t sleep and kept going over in our heads what   we had done wrong, was it us? That was something we had to know, if it was us that had caused it, I asked the doctors but they said no but you will always feel as though it was.   We should be able to protect your children not let them go through this.

If we were asked if we could look into the future and saw the day when we were sat in a room to be told Dylan had beat the illness and was in remission I would have said NO!   Because to me cancer meant death, but as you don’t understand the success rate it is such a shock.
When we were told Dylan had gone into remission it was the best day of our lives.  We could start to get life back to normal as best as we could. We had to attend clinic on a weekly basic and then went to monthly. The hardest part about seen the doctors was them telling us that it was still at a high risk of coming back and we found that hard knowing what we would have to go through again and see Dylan suffer the way he did, they also told us if it didn’t come back in the 1st year of been in remission then it probably wouldn’t.
I wanted to know what Dylan’s chances of having kids were I know what a long way a head I was thinking but I needed to know.  They said because he was such a young baby he had a small chance and there was a test he could have when Dylan was old enough to want to know.

In the 5mths away from the chemo and staying in hospital we started to return to a normal life, started getting our old routine back, but we did not know what was around the corner waiting to hunt us again.
One Sunday morning in July Dylan got up and wouldn’t walk he would scream when you tried to make him, trying to make ourselves believe it wasn’t his A.M.L. which had come back. We took Dylan to the hospital they told us we would have to stay in so Dylan could see a bone doctor. The doctor sent us for scans, to see if he had fluid on his hip but deep down inside I knew it wasn’t that, Dylan had a bone marrow test on Wednesday-by-Wednesday night the truth came out his Leukaemia had returned. We waited 3 days before we could get a bed into a Children’s hospital normally it would of been Birmingham but they had no staff, So we got sent to Manchester children’s hospital.
We knew the only hope left for Dylan’s survival would be a Bone Marrow Transplant.
Weeks passed and Dylan was doing great, had lots of dinners to build him up ready for the process of a November 5th transplant. He was put into remission straight away after his 1st course of chemo.
Another 1mth passed and Dylan’s bloods looked great to me but under a microscope they weren’t.  The leukaemia was back again and the doctors were worried as the transplant was knocked back to the 17th which wasn’t any good to us now. The doctors tried a new drug called mileage that showed us a bit of improvement but not a lot he also was given 3 days of chemo that helped him out also. Dylan got really ill and we were rushed to Birmingham Children’s Hospital to face some bad news. The doctor told us they needed to give Dylan a really high dose of chemo before his transplant.  They told us they would be surprised if he made it thorough his chemo, they also told us not to expect to bring him home after transplant. That day was the hardest part of our lives. As we knew we could lose him after everything we had gone through and what we put Dylan through. The doctor wanted us to take him home and not put him trough the chemo and transplant as he was also at a high risk of his heart and liver packing in, we talked and talked but knew we had to give Dylan that chance and we did. As Dylan started chemo he was really ill the thoughts that went through my mind were horrible I kept saying am I doing the right thing putting him through this making him more ill by having the chemo and what will he be like going through the transplant but that was something we had to wait and see to find out.

The day arrived, the day the doctors didn’t see our son getting to. TRANSPLANT DAY.
Dylan ended up having a half match using me who wasn’t as good as a full mach but we didn’t have the time to wait for a full match. Seeing the pain Dylan went through was hard you couldn’t do anything for him he was bed bound for 2weeks with 4 main carers and daily baths, He was not allowed out of his room, not able to play with other kids, the only people he could play with was us adults.
Dylan got up one morning and he was back to his old self we couldn’t believe it, we were allowed to take him out for a few hours a day and then we were allowed to take him out for a night and that was great spending a night with Dylan not in hospital, we knew the time was coming for us to take him home. 3 Weeks after transplant and we could bring our little boy home, we had been in hospital for at least 2/3mths and we all wanted to be was at home.
Dylan proved so many doctors wrong, he got through the chemo, got through the transplant, and didn’t have any infections, heart and liver doing fine.

We were on our way home coming down the m6 with the biggest smiles on our faces, we were taking are son home.  He was going home for the 1st time for so long.
Dylan was going to be home for his 2nd birthday that meant a lot to us as he spent his 1st birthday in hospital having chemo so he would be able to enjoy his birthday at home where any child should be.
Things weren’t going to be as good though because of the transplant we had to be so careful as Dylan could catch anything so easy.  So it meant daily baths and once a week we had to wipe everything down. I couldn’t clean up with him in the same room he had to be in a different room because of dust mites.
We knew Dylan couldn’t really have a big party and could only have adults there but when we talked about it we said he was to have 2 of his cousins there. We did and Dylan really enjoyed it and we were so glad we did as the phone call we received the night after was the phone call I really thought we would never receive after the way thing were going.
Dylan had to have a bone marrow test on Friday 12th December to make sure things were going ok, Dylan had his birthday party on the Sunday 14th December, it was his birthday on Monday 15th he woke up that morning and I will never forget his little face when he walked in to the front room where all his presents were and he looked at me and said “oh mummy Santa” hands over his mouth he was stunned, what a feeling I had tears came to my eyes just seeing him do it. He had a great day.
The following day we were putting Dylan’s drums together what he had for his birthday when the phone rang it was Dylan’s consultant from Birmingham with Dylan’s result from his bone marrow test she started 'I am so sorry to tell you this over the phone' I knew I had to sit down before I fell down, tears filled my eyes as she continued  “Dylan’s bone marrow results show a lot of active leukaemia and we need to see you tomorrow” I couldn’t believe this was happening we knew that the bone marrow was the last hope.  We knew that was it, we couldn’t save our 2yr old boy from this we couldn’t do anything but sit back and wait till we saw the doctors the day after.
We went to Birmingham and were told that Dylan could have some chemo to make him last and he would need some of my stem cells on Thursday to give him a bit of hope but in the long run they say Dylan would not really pull through it we asked what would be the worse scenario and they said at the worst a week. All the way home we cried and cried couldn’t believe it, a week only a week he wouldn’t even make it for Christmas my little perfect world was falling apart.
Sadly Dylan didn’t even make it the week he passed away on the 21st December 2003. We had woke up that morning with our son and we didn’t know what was lying in store for us, and within 4hrs he gave up, he had enough of all the pain. Dylan waited long enough to live a normal life. We came home that night and the house was bare his toys and clothes still lying around the way we left them.  Everyone was heart broken. But Dylan’s dad and me were more heart broken
Dylan was loved by so many people in and out of hospital, The local paper did a cover on Dylan’s funeral as they helped with the fundraising so we could take Dylan to Disneyland in U.S.A. But that dream has now been taken from us. His funeral took a lot of thinking and planning for us to make sure Dylan got a send off he deserved we had a horse and carriage and 3 limousines that took me and dad and his nana’s and granddad, aunties and uncles, we all walked behind the horse and carriage from our house to the church and as we arrived at the church I couldn’t believe how many people turned up it was full I still cant believe how many hearts my little boy had touched we received loads of cards and letters from people who knew Dylan and from people who didn’t know us but followed our story in the local paper.