Softball fundraiser set for Yuba City boy battling leukemia

Laura and Dan Quiroz took their son Alex to a doctor’s appointment in 2015 when they noticed he was pale, lethargic and getting bruised easily.

After initial tests and an urgent warning to take Alex to Sutter Children’s Hospital in Sacramento immediately that same day, doctors told Laura and Dan their son has acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Alex’s bone marrow mass produces immature lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, causing a buildup of unhealthy cells to crowd out healthy ones.

“He was quarantined for a month,” Dan said on Wednesday morning, as he sat at a desk at St. Isidore Catholic Church where he works as the Youth Ministry Coordinator.

“We sat next to him in his room. He couldn’t leave the quarantine section of the Children’s Hospital,” Dan said.

For the last three years, Alex has undergone several treatment visits every three weeks. But now Alex is in the home stretch of the treatment regimen. He will walk out of the hospital on Sept. 24 essentially cancer free.

Dan said it wasn’t easy to see his son go through treatment, losing his hair twice, and getting cracked and chapped lips from the chemotherapy.

“He couldn’t eat or drink or his lips would bleed,” Dan said. Alex, now 13, is looking forward to being active again and playing baseball with his fellow Riverbend Elementary School students.

“I’ve never lost faith in God. He has stuck with us, he has walked with us,” Dan said. “We never said, ‘Why us?’, we never said, ‘Why him?’, we just asked God to stay with us.”

Alex, a big Derek Jeter fan, hasn’t been able to play because

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