1/11/03 - It is with the deepest sorrow I must report that little Shawn, featured last August just passed on this evening. He was suffering terribly even with morphine every 2 hours. His mother is in shock.

Shawn was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma on October 3, 2000. He was really sick and I kept taking him to the doctors and they kept telling me he had some kind of virus but I knew there was something more wrong than that so he ended up going to a peds specialist for infectiouis diseases. When he couldn't figure out what was wrong either we went a Pediatric Oncologist and he did a CT Scan and that is how we found out he had cancer.

He went though 5 rounds of chemo and then surgery to remove the tumors and then a Stem cell transplant and then we moved to Nebraska and then he had radiation treatments. Then he relapsed in Feb. 2002 and he is going though the chemo again. When I spoke to the doctor once he seemed not to hear me when I asked how Shawn was doing, and after he walked away the nurse told me since he relapsed, his chances were much less. I spoke to the doctor this week and he said Shawn's is very aggressive and not responding to the treatment. He told me that he doesn't think Shawn will be cured of the disease. He said we could try experimental drugs but that might not work. So he said he might have 6 months or even up to 2 years but he will likely die from this. The chemo Shawn is getting right now is so the cancer doesn't grow very fast, and that will "buy us more time", but it is not going to kill all of the cancer and cure him.

On a lighter note Shawn is getting his Broviac taken out tomorrow {July 5th} and they are going to put in a port instead. Then Shawn can be more like a normal 4 year old and take regular baths instead of a sponge bath and he can go swimming and all that.

Shawn's Mom keeps a journal up to date on his website here