ALL IN for Zander Lonas (Fight against T-Cell ALL)
Zander Wayne Lonas was born on May 6th, 2022 in Newnan, Georgia. Zander was always a big baby, in the 90th plus percentile for height and weight at every one of his check ups. He had the most precious blue eyes and handsome blonde hair. He would light up a room with his smile, and had the sweetest personality. Other than one encounter with RSV at 2 months old for a brief hospital visit, Zander was a big healthy baby boy. He loved to be outside with mom, dad, and his big sister (and best friend) Leila. His favorite days consisted of helping dad take the dogs out before work, going on his routine morning walks with mom, playing outside with his toy lawn mower, and a snack (or three) with Cocomelon time. He loved to go to football practice where Dad worked or ride the golf cart with mom, a certified athletic trainer, while at one of her sporting events.
During the spring of 2024, Zander developed swollen lymph nodes and a fever, which his pediatrician attributed to possible strep throat. After a week of antibiotics with no real progress, we took Zander to urgent care for another evaluation. When the urgent care provider saw Zander’s distended belly on top of his other symptoms, she referred us to go to the emergency room for further evaluation. We decided to take Zander to CHOA Scottish Rite because of how well they took care of him during his early run in with RSV. After being evaluated in CHOA’s emergency room and getting some blood work on Zander, the ER doctor gave us the devastating news. Zander did not just have a bad virus like we had hoped, but with a total white blood cell count of 200,000, the doctor was certain Zander had leukemia. His specific type, T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), is extremely rare and only found in 450 kids out of roughly 75 million kids in the U.S. each year (that's 0.000006%).
Zander started his 1st round of chemotherapy on April 1st and responded really well. He always had a positive spirit in the hospital and loved to walk around the Aflac floor and wave at all the nurses. He would even stick out his little two year old finger when they came to do his vitals. After responding so well with his first round of chemotherapy, Zander was able move on to the consolidation phase of his treatment with oral meds given from home and regular outpatient visits to CHOA for chemo infusions. Throughout all of the nasty oral medications, routine port accesses where he would have to be poked with a needle, and hundreds of vital checks, Zander’s positive fighting spirit remained strong. We were back home in his happy place and going on his morning walks with mom.
A few weeks after celebrating his birthday, Zander spiked a fever at home in between rounds of chemo. We thought this was because he got one of those infections the doctors kept warning us was inevitable for someone with Zander's condition. Once we took him to the ER we found out that this was not the case, his cancer had returned in the middle of one of his strongest chemo rounds. Zander spent the next 2 months back on the Aflac floor undergoing heavy chemotherapy. His cancer had become resilient to some of the medications he was on at the time of his relapse, making his treatment plan very complex. Zander was just as tough as his cancer. Zander never flinched, never complained, and never gave up. He fought through 4 additional chemo rounds with only one requirement, that he had his mom and his dad by his side to hold him in their arms.
On August 18th, Zander finished his fight with T-Cell ALL right where he wanted to be, in his mother’s arms. His doctors were amazed at his strength and the fact that he never once developed a serious infection, something that is almost guaranteed to happen as a result of his condition. While his physical battle with T-Cell ALL is complete, the battle of advocating for finding a cure from this horrible disease is far from over. With September being Blood Cancer Awareness Month, we hope that you will consider joining us on the battlefront by donating towards supporting other children who are enduring this same fight as Zander. Every cent will go towards the treatment of children with T-Cell ALL and assist in research efforts needed to develop clinical trials that could one day spare any child from having to fight this condition again!
From the bottom of our hearts,
THANK YOU!