A 5-year-old fighter celebrates the end of chemotherapy:
Aaron Cawood lounges on the sofa, munching apple slices and watching Loony Tunes on the Nickelodeon channel.
Then the shy, blond-haired 5-year-old slides off the couch, whispers something to his mother and runs toward the kitchen. Seconds later, he returns with a plastic container with a long, strange-looking tube stuffed inside.
“It’s a broviac,” Aaron says clearly. “It was in my chest.”
The important word Aaron used was “was.” The broviac, a medical device used to administer medicine, was in his chest because he was receiving chemotherapy treatments.
When he was 2, Aaron was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And on Feb. 19, three years and three months later, he received his last treatment.
“The first time I saw him run just blew my mind,” his mother, Patti Cawood, said. “Just taking a bath without a broviac is too cool.”
It all began with a sinus infection.
Cawood and her husband, Randy, were concerned but not alarmed.
“They put him on that pink stuff,” she recalled. “But he got sicker and sicker.”
The boy became very pale and his belly started to bloat, so things really didn’t seem right. It was November, 1994, when the test results confirmed the unthinkable–Aaron had leukemia.
“You can’t be right,” the shocked mother told doctors.
But they were. The bloating resulted from the swelling of his little spleen and liver. The chemo treatments had to begin immediately.
In one day, the Cawoods discovered their young son had a life-threatening disease and would have to endure years of difficult treatments.
“That day,” she said, “our lives turned upside down.”
Fighting leukemia with chemotherapy is bad enough for adults. But when it happens to a toddler who was just learning to speak, it’s heartbreaking.
“He was just so sick,” Cawood said, eyeing her content son lying nearby as her youngest boy, 2-year-old Duncan, played with his grandmother, Georgia Cawood, in another room.
“He was just two years old.”
He stayed in the hospital for weeks at a time, and Cawood always was at his bedside.
“I couldn’t leave him,” she said. “I just couldn’t leave him.”
While their son was struggling to fight off the disease, the Cawoods were in the process of building their home on the Monroe-Dundee, Mich., town line.
That only added to the hardship.
Aaron spent time in the intensive care unit at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, where doctors initially gave him a 40 percent chance of survival. But the young boy was tough.
Instead of screaming and kicking while being forced to take nasty medications, Aaron took them like a champ.
“He was a trooper,” she said. “He did great.”
With the help of family, friends, employers and nurses, the Cawoods fought the disease while keeping themselves sane.
“You just have to deal with it,” Cawood said. “You just cope. You go on automatic pilot. We learned stuff that Lord knows we never thought we would have to do.”
During the treatments, Aaron lost his hair and eyebrows. It has since grown back a little darker, curlier and thicker.
In 1996, in the midst of his treatments, the Cawoods learned that an organization called “The Rainbow Connection” would grant a wish for Aaron.
So he decided to ask for what millions of kids dream of–a trip to Disney World.
A limousine picked up Aaron, his parents and his older sister, Kati. They flew to Florida and spent six days and five nights there, visiting the theme park, Universal Studios and Sea World, all expenses paid.
“They even gave us spending money,” she said.
The Cawoods enjoyed their time so much–and Aaron was so grateful for the trip during a difficult time–that the family wants to repay the organization.
The Cawoods are planning a party to not only celebrate the end of Aaron’s chemotherapy treatment but to raise at least $2,000 so another critically ill child can have a wish come true.
Aaron is not considered cured. He still has regular checkups and won’t be officially cured until he’s cancer free for five years.
Although the last few years have been difficult for Aaron and his family, his mother said some good has come from the experience.
It has pulled the family together, making it stronger. And nothing is ever taken for granted, not even just watching Aaron run or swim in a pool.
“Every day is a gift,” she said. “We’ve been pretty lucky. You have to look at it that way.”
