Tiny smiler battles cancer
Bubbly Grayson Partridge has a reputation for his beaming smile. He’s also a superhero.
In February, when the Whanga¯ rei toddler was 8 months old, he was diagnosed with anaplastic large-cell lymphoma — a rare cancer of the immune system.
The 1-year-old has endured six months of chemotherapy, four months on a cancer therapy drug imported from Britain, and is about to start the next step in his fight — several more months of hardcore chemotherapy before a bonemarrow transplant.
His parents, Alex and Jody Partridge, say that despite this he’s remained a smiley little boy.
“He’s the coolest kid, he’s basically so happy all the time, he smiles for everyone. He had a bit of a reputation when we first started going to hospital because he would just beam at all of the nurses,” Jody said.
She initially took Grayson to the doctor in late January with a mild fever. He was put on antibiotics but over that weekend his neck started to swell on one side and he ended up in Whanga¯ rei Hospital.
There he was pumped with different antibiotics because doctors believed he had an infection.
But instinct told his parents it was something more serious.
“His neck was getting bigger and bigger, his fever was getting worse and worse,” Jody said. They pushed for further investigation and Grayson was eventually taken by helicopter to Starship hospital in Auckland.
After a biopsy Grayson was diagnosed with the rare cancer.
“By the time we got the diagnosis it was almost like a relief because we thought, right, now we know what it is, let’s treat it,” Alex said.
The past nine months have been a rollercoaster ride for Alex and Jody.
Grayson relapsed during plan A, six months of chemo, and a scan showed that plan B, the cancer therapy drug from Britain, also had not worked. “We thought there was a possibility he could be cured . . . then we had this scan and it was a very, very hard week,” Alex said.
A particularly tough time for them was spending Grayson’s first birthday in hospital, in isolation, while he was having chemotherapy. “We weren’t allowed to have visitors in the room,” Jody said.
“It was a pretty low point, it was one of our worst days. We wanted so much for our son,” Alex said.
The couple have been living between Whanga¯ rei and Auckland and have been unable to work as they both need to be with Grayson.
“Financially we are going so far backwards it’s going to take us a lot of time to recover,” Jody said.
Yesterday the family headed to Auckland to start plan C — several more months of heavy doses of chemotherapy to get Grayson ready for a bone-marrow transplant.
“One year of crap for 99 years of awesome,” Jody said “He’s our superhero.”