All working parents have received the call. The school, the babysitter or the spouse calling to say one of the children doesn't feel well. But the call Mark Lewis received changed his family's life forever.

In July 2008, Mark was playing with his son Adam and noticed a swollen lymph node on the 3-year-old's neck. His wife Debbie took Adam to the doctor for an exam, but all the tests came back clean. About a month later, Debbie and Adam both came down with a fever and another swollen lymph node appeared on Adam's neck. As it so happened, it was time for Adam's annual checkup, so Debbie scheduled a routine well-child visit.

Debbie informed his pediatrician Dr. McNabb that she was concerned that the swollen lymph nodes continued to grow, so Dr. McNabb put the well-child visit on hold for more in-depth blood tests. When he came back in the room, he was accompanied by all the doctors in the clinic.

"Obviously I knew there was something wrong at that point," Debbie said. "They were talking doctor language I didn't understand. Dr. McNabb said, 'I think you may need to go to Children's.' At that point, I asked if it was lymphoma. And he said, 'I wish you wouldn't have asked me that, because I don't know.'"

It was Sept. 3. Mark was sitting in his office with his assistant principal watching torrents of rain from Hurricane Gustav swirl outside the window. He knew Debbie had taken Adam to the doctor, but he thought nothing of it. Debbie called Mark at work and delivered this message: "You need to get home ... now."

"Some days you remember all your life, because they were good," said Mark, who is the principal at Jim Stone Elementary School in Conway. "Others, you remember because they turn into your own personal Sept. 11. That was one of those days."

Debbie met Mark at the door with the complete blood count report from Dr. McNabb. Their friend and neighbor, Allison Fisch, a doctor, also looked at the report. She remained calm, but indicated that, yes, there was cause for alarm and that the family needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible.

"I asked Allison, 'If this were [your daughter], would you be concerned?'" recalled Debbie. "And at that point, a single tear rolled down her check. So, I knew it was a big deal."

The Lewises packed a few things in a small overnight bag and drove through the rain and wind to Little Rock. "As I crossed the river bridge, it felt like I was having a heart attack," Mark said. "It felt like an anvil on my chest. I remember thinking, 'I've got to be strong here.' The whole thing seemed like a bad dream."

 

Facing the Facts

 

Following what was a mostly sleepless night, the Lewis family waited as Adam's doctors performed a lumbar puncture to confirm what they already expected. Mark and Debbie sat in a crowded conference room with a team of doctors and nurses to receive the news: Adam had acute lymphocytic leukemia, a strain of leukemia in which the cancer invades the bone marrow and "blasts" immature white blood cells into the blood stream, rendering the patient unable to fight off infection.

"[Hearing] the word 'leukemia'...We were in shock." Mark said. "This wasn't supposed to happen to our family."

Adam was immediately admitted to the hospital. On Friday, Sept. 5, he had surgery to create a port and began receiving chemotherapy treatments immediately. "We asked everyone not to come up to the hospital," Debbie said. "But around noon, people began pouring into the surgical waiting room. I was so moved to see the outpouring of love and support. We didn't know [it], but it was exactly what we needed."

Finally, after five days, Mark and Debbie were able to take Adam home, where he began a regimen of oral and port chemotherapy that included one and a half pills of XX once a day, eight pills of XX on Fridays, monthly XX in his port and quarterly spinal taps. He was in remission within a month, but still faced three and half years of therapy (the cure rate for leukemia in patients under 12 is 85 percent).

 

Surviving, With Support

 

Today, Adam is doing well. He has 14 more months of the chemo regimen. The chemotherapy does have negative side effects, including bone pain and fatigue, "so it's a bit of a blessing that he doesn't know what it feels like to feel good," noted Debbie. But the good days outnumber the bad, and Adam has been cleared to play soccer and now attends preschool at First United Methodist Church.

Rallying around the Lewises, friends from the community held blood drives for Adam and fundraisers to help defray the family's medical expenses.

"We could not have gotten through this without the support of our family and friends," said Mark, adding how the staff at Arkansas Children's Hospital is among those they now consider family. "Everybody's heart aches for you. Everybody wants to do something," he said.

"We're a cancer family now. We have excellent doctors, wonderful family support and a lot of hope. It's the strongest fraternity you'll ever be a part of and one that you never wanted to be a part of, but it's the best one you can ever find," Debbie said. And "We feel extremely blessed, as odd as that sounds. We have a long way to go with his treatment, and our life has changed completely, but there are so many families whose children don't have as positive a prognosis as Adam."