Danny’s leukemia road to recovery

Hello everyone,

It pains me to tell you all that on April 17, our son Danny was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. AML is a type of cancer that is in the blood and bone marrow, that rapidly progresses. Danny was sick with strep throat for almost two weeks prior to being diagnosed, where the urgent care we took him too assured us he was going to be fine and just needed rest and antibiotics. As the 2 week time frame went by, he only continued to get worse. He started to develop a rash, high fever that would not break, blisters on his tongue and mouth, but what lead us to taking him to the emergency room was him going in and out of consciousness, with a rapid increase in his heart rate just from standing up the night of the 17th. We took him to the tower health hospital where less than four hours after he was admitted, he was diagnosed, and being transferred to CHOP, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Since Danny has arrived here at CHOP, he was transferred immediately from the emergency room into the ICU. He has already gone through many challenges. His lungs are having issues the doctors have not been able to diagnose. He has 2 blood clots attached to his heart that the doctors are monitoring extremely close, and they also found a small amount of bleeding coming from his brain. 7 days ago Danny was sedated and placed on a ventilator, and 6 days ago he was placed on a paralytic medication to avoid him from continuing to cough up blood so his lungs can heal. As a parent, seeing Danny like this is by far one of the hardest challenges we have ever had to go through.

As of yesterday, he was taken off of the paralytic medication, where he can start to move some of his body, and once every now and then we can get him to nod his head when we ask him questions and open his eyes for a brief moment. This was done because, fortunately, the bleeding has stopped in his lungs, and the doctors needed to assure he was responsive with no form of damage done to his brain. When he wakes up more testing will need to be done to confirm, but the doctors did tell us everything with his brain is looking great so far!

As of this morning Danny has completed his first 10 day cycle of his chemotherapy, which he has minimum 3 treatments left to go. It is going to be a few weeks until his immune system comes back online where he can start to have additional help naturally for his body to recover.

This is going to be a long road for Danny. The doctors are telling us that this is going to be a 6-8 month journey for him. Although the last two days have been on the bright side, the doctors continue to tell us that Danny is extremely sick, and his treatment options can change hour by hour. Right now we are hoping that he is well enough to walk at his high school graduation on May 31st, but most importantly, we are praying that Danny will make a full recovery and beat his AML 100%.

Danny has been in the hospital for almost 2 weeks now, and we are being told he is not going to be getting out of here for at least the next 4-6 weeks. His mother Yahaira, which most of you know as Yary, has not left his side since he has been admitted to the hospital. I’ve been here everyday with him, along with making trips back and forth a few times a week for supplies that Yary, Danny, his little brother Abdy, and myself need from home to be by his side. His biological father Danny, who he is name after, caught a flight up from Florida and has been here by his side everyday as well.

With this being stated, none of us have ever been the type to ask for a hand out. We have been extremely hesitant to make this go fund me because it’s just not the type of people we are, but the truth is, none of us have worked in almost 2 weeks with no money coming in. We are beyond appreciative to everyone who is able to donate to help us pay the bills and keep up with purchasing food on a daily basis.

Most importantly, please keep Danny in your prayers so this young man can make a full recovery and live the beautiful long life he deserves ahead of him. We appreciate all of you from the bottom of our hearts, thank you! ❤️