“I couldn’t ask for better nurses.”
When Cameron came to Medical City Children’s Hospital, he had a very aggressive form of leukemia—acute myeloblastic leukemia—and today he’s cancer free and living an ordinary boy’s life. It wasn’t easy to get to this great result, though. Cameron’s type of blood cancer is very difficult to treat and, in fact, the first type of chemotherapy he was given didn’t force his cancer into remission.

Dr. Carl Lenarsky, Director of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, explains the next stage in treatment: “We proceeded with very aggressive chemotherapy to get him into remission. The only way to save his life was with a stem cell transplant, but he had no one in his family who could donate. So we searched the world and found an unrelated cord blood match.”

Even after the transplant, Cameron was not out of the woods. He developed septic shock and had to spend three days in the pediatric intensive care unit. Dr. Lenarsky says, “It required a very sophisticated, hands-on level of care to get him through this very complex treatment.” Cameron’s mom, Sandy, remembers being impressed during this time with how well Dr. Lenarsky and his team worked with the ICU staff. She says, “The doctors definitely talk to each other. Everybody knew what everybody else was doing.”

Sandy’s not just a mom—she’s a nurse herself, so she provides a valuable perspective on the care that Cameron received. “The nurses were excellent,” she says. “I couldn't ask for better nurses. They gave me room to do what I needed to do to make me feel like I was still caring for Cameron. And yet they also did what they needed to do to care for him.”

Dr. Lenarsky offers the story’s happy ending. Four years after his transplant, Cameron “has no signs of disease and now he's a normal little boy back in school. I think that one patient summarizes my feelings about Medical City Children's Hospital: We have been able to deliver excellent care in a loving and compassionate environment. But we can also give a level of sophisticated care that is not always available in every institution.”

To learn about other experiences that parents and children have had at Medical City Children’s Hospital, read our other success stories.