The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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28 THE WOLVERINE ❱ OCTOBER 2024 of leukemia. This is obviously a big shock for you all, but we need you to go to ei- ther Children's Hospital of Los Angeles or UCLA — tonight.'" Jeff called Terri, who was shuttling Brandon and several other kids toward an Odyssey of the Mind competition, where teams invent, create, and demon- strate various products or practices. She directed the team and found herself in wall-to-wall traffic on the freeway when the news — not including the word "leu- kemia" — arrived. Urged by Jeff to stay with the kids, she did, covering her dread. "I'm a wreck," she said. "I'm trying to hold it together for Brandon, and with the kids. I don't even know what to do. We get out there, get Brandon to bed, and I'm just waiting in the hotel room for them to call me." Following an extensive blood test at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, a doc- tor walked in and pre-warned Jeff, who then readied his son for the official news to come moments later. Jeff noted: "I spoke to Davis and said, 'Look, the doctor is going to come in and tell us some rough news. You've got leu- kemia. We're going to get through it and we're going to figure out a game plan here. I love you very much. This is going to be hard. But we're all in this together.'" Acute myeloid leukemia carries a five- year survival rate for kids of 66 percent. The Warrens were hyper thrust into learning about those numbers, while pre- paring for months of one of the toughest battles they could imagine. "Being in that room, and not knowing enough about leukemia, and knowing we were going upstairs and he was being ad- mitted, it was made even worse by look- ing at your phone, and Davis looking on his phone and trying to understand what leukemia was," Jeff said. "It was horrible." "It was surreal," Terri added. "I showed up the next morning. I was in no condi- tion to drive, for sure, after I heard the news. Then I had this obligation to these kids. They were the first group to go in the morning, and Jeff said, 'Just stay there for the kids.' I had other parents there. The kids finished their performance, and then I told the other parents what was going on. Of course, everyone was more than happy to help." As for the couple's reaction, Terri noted it shifted quickly from shock to protec- tiveness. "You just go into parent mode," she said. "What's the best thing I can do for my son right now? We're all scared out of our minds. You just kind of put on the face and the attitude you need to. You want it all to be fine. You're talking to yourself, and you're talking to him, and being as reassuring as possible." The team at CHLA helped immensely in the assurance category, she stressed. "In the whole five months we were in that hospital, I never felt like we weren't well taken care of," she said. "We had all these doctors. We had a team, and they're all talking about the cases. You're in this consortium in North America, working to get the right solutions to the cancer. I was just so thankful." Still, the fight would test them all. The chemo drips began the following Wednesday, and the process of burning the disease away isn't a pleasant one. "It was a horrible night," Jeff recalled. "Davis got really, really sick. He spiked a really high fever, like 104. They put him on an ice bed, and he threw up all over the place. It was really bad. "It was the chemo attacking all the leukocytes, which were exploding in his system. It was rough, and then you go at it the next night. It was a really rough time. Anybody who has had a kid go through that can identify with it." Davis soon lost his appetite, leading to the eventual near 40 pounds of weight loss. The cycle of seven days of chemo- therapy drip, followed by three or four weeks of staying in the hospital to recover, went on for almost five months. Asked when the assurance of a strong recovery began setting in, Terri observed: "August was his five-year anniversary." Then she added: "You never know. You can say, OK, the cancer is gone. But they were continuing to test his spinal fluid, because it could go in there. The chemo was working. It was getting rid of the cancer cells. Definitely a great sign, great that he was responding and bounc- ing back. But it opens up an option you never thought existed. Once you're open to the fact that my child got cancer and we're hoping it doesn't come back, there's Off the field, Warren has spent a good deal of time connecting with and inspiring cancer patients at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor. PHOTO COURTESY C.S. MOTT CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL