Speaking Points for Kick Off

Jayden

INTRO

November 16th, 2018 - the day my 14 year old son Jayden was diagnosed with Leukemia. He
began is hospital stay immediately due to a fever and his cancer treatment started just a few
days later. Our lives were forever changed.

Jayden did very well during most of his treatments but there was certainly the share of rough times. It
was determined that a bone marrow transplant was the best course of treatment for him, but in order
for that to happen he had to be in remission. He was placed on a powerful continuous chemotherapy
cocktail IV for 30 days. We crossed our fingers that it would work. On June 18, 2020 we were
headed down to Cincinnati Children’s for a transplant appointment when we got the news that he was
in remission.

Fortunately, Jayden’s sister Kylie was a match to be his donor and the transplant was
successful. He is still in remission and continues follow up appointments and takes medicine to
help prevent any complications from the transplant such as graft vs. host disease.
As parents, you often feel totally helpless. It has been hard to watch our athletic, active
teenager miss many milestones, see him lose weight and struggle with depression. We still see
the side effects for some of the meds he has to take and we are not able to take that discomfort
away. While it was hard to go through, we were blessed Jayden handled most of the treatment
and meds well and is doing currently doing great.

Cancer changes your outlook on life. We are more present for each and value every moment of
life. Even when times are rough, we have bad MOMENTS instead of bad DAYS - we want to
appreciate all the good that occurs daily.

For Jayden, he has become a lot less stressed about the little things in life that go along with
being a teenager. He looks at life differently because of what he has been through, but it has
brought an extra focus about all that he wants to achieve in life and the plans he has to reach
those goals.

To the Candidates and Team Members who are raising life saving funds to help cure cancer, we
say Thank you! Because of people like you, LLS is helping families like ours and bringing us all
one step closer to a cure.