Alex’s symptoms
It was a very unusual case and very sudden.
We had noticed some bruising on Alex’s legs so we took him to our GP on 4 May 2010. The GP thought that Alex perhaps had anaemia. He recommended that we visit the Accident and Emergency unit at our local hospital if the symptoms didn’t improve.
That evening, we gave Alex his usual bedtime bath with lots of bubbles and he screamed the house down. He usually loved his bubbles so by this point, we were getting really concerned. He went straight to sleep that night, without any fuss or bother.
At 6am, I woke to Alex’s screams. He would be in distress for around 10 minutes, then settle for another ten, then scream again. He seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness and was having problems walking, so we knew something was really wrong. I called an ambulance who rushed him straight to A&E.
Within two hours, Alex was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and transferred to Nottingham’s Queens Medical Centre’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. By 5pm that same day, he was in a medically-induced coma.