Finn was a happy healthy full of life crazy five-year-old boy, he loves all things related to hunting, fishing, trucks, and heavy equipment. His family owns an excavation company and Finn started going to work with his mom when he was just 10 days old. Finn knows what every price of the equipment is called and exactly what it does!

Their lives were “normal” and hectic up until July 20, 2020, when on a weekend vacation to Hampton Beach, Finn had been having the time of his life playing and swimming in the ocean, and on the last night he woke up in the middle of the night crying in pain that his back and head were hurting him, he also had a fever. The trip was cut short to go home where he cried the whole way home. When he got home his mom took him immediately to his pediatrician where they were told he must have something viral going on. They for five more days where his symptoms had not gotten better so he was brought back to the doctor and they explained that he was in a lot of pain and that they did not believe this was viral. His family was assured again it was.

This happened ALL summer long, as the summer went on Finn continued to be sick, and had more “bad” days than good. His mom brought him back and forth to the doctors every week sometimes two times per week, all to be told it must be viral. Finn had fevers, back and leg pain, headaches, and was extremely tired all of the time, and eventually started losing weight as he had no appetite. Fast forward to the Thursday before Labor Day he went to the doctors for his kindergarten physical and saw his primary care doctor who he had only seen at the beginning of his symptoms. His mom explained to her what we had been going through for the summer and requested she order extensive lab work, which she did. By this point, Finn's mom was getting very scared and nervous for what was to come as she knew he was very sick and it was not “viral”. The labs were ordered and the results came back. The doctor told me again they believed we were dealing with a viral infection. His mom asked if they thought this could be leukemia and was told they didn’t believe that at all. Finn's mom requested a redraw on his blood work. It was a holiday weekend so they had to wait until a Tuesday. September 8, 2020, Finn started his first day of kindergarten and after school, he went to have his blood drawn again. Wednesday, September 9, 2020, started out as a normal day for him, and Finn got on the bus for his second day of school. He was so happy to be going and riding the bus. He was at a school about an hour when I received a phone call from the doctors that changed their lives forever. They called said Finn needed to be picked up and go to Albany Med Pediatric ER immediately because they now believed that Finn in fact did have leukemia.

Finn was brought to Albany Med and that’s where his family's worst fears were confirmed -- he did have leukemia. Finn was diagnosed and things moved quickly from there. Within 24 hours he had surgery to place his port, and get a spinal tap... they learned he had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). It was 68% through his blood and into his spine. He needed a blood transfusion that first night in the hospital and chemo started the next day. It has been a wild ride since that phone call in September but Finn is doing well and thankfully is responding well to his treatments, but he still has a long ways to go as his treatment course will be a total of 3 years.