Diagnosed at a very young age
Though not a condition or life obstacle I was born with, the shadow of cancer has been ever present for as long as I can remember. The symptoms that my parents noticed were that I was always lethargic and that I needed carrying everywhere. I also always complained of having sore legs and this led them to me getting checked at the doctors and later being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Having been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at only four years old, the procedural treatments that coincided at the time are all I knew and growing up obliviously accepted through my young innocence. I had no control over the diagnosis, it was an unwelcome bump if not a collapsed hole into the abyss in the road of life, and through being a child I had no input towards choices or the decision making that followed.
And to say it bluntly, the control of parenthood was completely pulled out of my mother’s (Michelle) and father’s (Paul) reach. It must have been such an agonisingly heart stopping moment for the two of them. Nature (the parent nurturing and protecting their child, their baby) had been put aside for the unfortunate, the careless, the narrow-minded (the diagnosis). Though not physically, it was them that mentally felt the brunt of the overall pain.
I believe that any parent reading this would agree.
![two boys looking at comera with christopher wearing yellow jacket and the other boy is wearing white hoodie](https://www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/two-boys-looking-at-comera-with-christopher-wearing-yellow-jacket-and-the-other-boy-is-wearing-white-hoodie-305x285.jpg)