Joshua's story

Joshua’s diagnosis

My name is Toby Whitesman and I’d like to tell you a little about my son, Joshua, and his battle with leukaemia.

We live in Ashford in Kent. My wife Pippa and I have two lovely children, Amber, 8, and Joshua, who has now turned five. For the last four years, it has felt like the whole family has been fighting Joshua’s leukaemia every step of the way.

When Joshua was 18 months old, and Amber only four, our world was turned upside down. Joshua was diagnosed with leukaemia. It wasn’t as sudden as that sounds – there had been signs that he was unwell. He had unexplained bruises, was listless and developed a rash.

We visited a lot of health professionals but it was a trip to A & E that confirmed our suspicions that something was very wrong. It was surreal – I’d dropped Pippa with Joshua at the entrance to A & E whilst I went to find a parking space. I went to find them only to discover that Joshua had already been admitted. Just 40 minutes later we were told that Joshua had leukaemia.

12 weeks initial chemotherapy treatment

Our local hospital wanted to send Joshua to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital up in London. Unfortunately he also had the rotavirus – a severe stomach bug – which meant that he would be a danger to the other children there.

Instead we went to Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge where Joshua would spend 12 weeks having his first chemotherapy treatment.

Cambridge is a long way from Ashford. Amber had started school only the week before and we had to split up our family. I went up to Cambridge to be with Joshua whilst Pippa and Amber stayed in Kent so that she could at least continue with school.

It was just so hard to be apart from each other. Joshua became very unwell in hospital – he lost 17lbs in three weeks, a huge amount of his total weight. It got to the stage that he couldn’t support his own head, so I’d sit on the bed with him, cross-legged so that he could at least sit up by leaning on me.

Joshua ended up being fed through a tube for a whole year, whilst taking a whole variety of chemotherapy medications and steroids as he battled through. The next three years of our lives became daily chemotherapy, hospital visits and constant worry.

It’s been a very long four years for my family

It’s been a very long four years for my family, but we do now feel that we are on the home straight. We know how lucky we are that Joshua is clear of his cancer, though we are now learning to live with the after-effects of treatment.

Donations are what make medical advances in treatment possible and help more children, like our Joshua, to survive.