RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — “You could be worried about travel baseball teams or something on a Wednesday night, and within 14 hours your life is completely changed.”
It’s a scenario Rutherford County Director of Schools Dr. James Sullivan and his wife, Kaycee, had to live out four years ago.
“Just quickly, your whole perspective of the world changes,” he said.
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What started as a visit to the doctor’s office for an ear infection turned into something much bigger for their son, Declan.
“We really had no idea at that point what was going on,” said Kaycee. “So we got home, packed, and went to Vanderbilt, and by five o’clock that afternoon, he was diagnosed with leukemia.”
At just 8 years old, Declan was now fighting a cancer called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, right at the beginning of the pandemic.
“Leukemia does not have stages because it’s in your blood, so technically it’s all over,” James said. “So instead they do risk factors, and he was the highest risk that you could have, and so he got the largest amount of chemotherapy you could have.”