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By CHRIS SHIPMAN
Hometown News
Dusty Ashmore’s family thought it was just a case of strep throat. His older sisters, Hayley, age 6, and Katie, age 5, had gotten it, but after two days on antibiotics were feeling fine. Dusty, age 3, showed no improvement. He looked washed out and pale, his mother, Leila, said. At first, she thought it might be anemia, since she is anemic herself. So, on February 2, she took him to the pediatrician to run blood tests. Dusty’s hemoglobin count was 4.6. A normal count is 10. The doctor told his mother that the count was dangerously low, that his body was struggling to get oxygen through his system, and that he needed to go to the hospital to look for internal bleeding.
Later that day, at Laurens County Hospital, doctors did more blood work and took a chest x-ray. Dusty’s hemoglobin count had fallen to 4.2. The doctor was on the phone with the Hemotology Oncology Clinic in Greenville immediately after getting results, Leila said. It wasn’t strep throat or anemia. It was leukemia, and Dusty needed to get to Greenville right away.
Dusty and his parents got to the clinic around 6 p.m. Doctors worked on him until 11 p.m. He received a blood transfusion and had to be stuck with needles 14 different times because he was so dehydrated. Doctors also put in a plastic tube under his collarbone as a medicine port—for his “Lightning McQueen Turbo Juice.”
“He’s tough as nails. He’s my hero,” his father Dustin, Sr., said. “He’s Daddy’s hero.”
The procedures that night were painful. At one point, it took five people to hold him down. The treatment continues to be painful. “There are times when the parental instinct kicks in and you just want to grab him up and run,” Dustin, Sr., said.
But as painful as the procedures are, it’s the only way to kill the cancer.
Dusty has about six more months of aggressive chemo, but the whole process will take three years at least. The treatment has made his skin extremely sensitive and tender, it has caused hip problems and a pain in his jaw. The steroids he is taking cause mood swings, and the 20 extra pounds he has gained also causes problems with walking.
“Everything changes,” Leila said. “I notice something new everyday.”
The second phase of treatment will be more toxic and could cause Dusty’s hair to fall out. Before the diagnosis, he had a head full of bright red hair. “He looked like Opie Taylor,” Dustin, Sr., said. But, his parents decided to have it shaved before it started falling out.
Doctors have also prescribed anabolic steroids for the first phase of chemo. It makes him feel hungry all the time, his parents said, and it makes everything taste good. He eats things now that he used to turn up his nose to. He loves pizza and ravioli—and Starbursts. Since February, he has put on 20 pounds. Most of it is just water retention, the doctors told the parents, and they told them not to throw out his old clothes yet, because he will be off the steroids for the second phase, and the chemotherapy will take a lot out of him.
Doctors now say he is an early responder to the treatment and that the cancer is not spreading. His chances of remission are high, Leila said, but being so young, the chances of a relapse are high too. “It’s a roller coaster ride,” she said.
“Can’t wait to have our boy back.”
Even with full remission, Dusty’s chances of getting another cancer in adulthood are also higher for having had leukemia as a child. “He could get lung cancer and never smoke a day in his life,” Dustin, Sr. said. It could also lead to problems with walking and learning disabilities, Leila said. “But, I would rather have him in special ed or have to teach him how to walk again than die of leukemia,” she added. “We can’t wait to have our boy back.”
And it’s a struggle the whole family is undertaking.
“It’s very trying, but it has brought everybody closer,” Dustin, Sr., said. “It makes you see that life is very important and very precious.”
And through it all, he and Leila are trying to help their two young daughters understand their little brother’s situation and make sure they feel loved as well. The first thing the doctors and nurses at the clinic told the parents was that “a child doesn’t get cancer, a family does,” Leila said.
“We couldn’t ask for a better group of doctors and nurses,” Dustin, Sr., said. “They’ve become a second set of parents to him and to us”—along with the psychologists, counselors, social workers, teachers and others who work at the clinic. Dusty is supposed to start 4-year-old kindergarten this year, Leila said, and she has been touched by how caring her daughters’ teachers at the primary school have been and how caring the Woodruff community has been.
The family is under a heavy burden, though, and will need the community’s help. Gasoline, food, rent, laundry, everything has a price, not to mention doctor’s visits and prescriptions. Medicaid covers most of the medicine, but there is a nausea medication he takes which costs about $1,000 a bottle. There is also a $68,000 bill for the first nine days in the hospital which wasn’t covered.
On March 21, Bright Beginnings Daycare and others are hosting “Diggin’ Day for Dustin” to help the family financially and help raise awareness of the disease. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., rain or shine, there will be a yard sale and bake sale at the daycare, 129 MacArthur St., Woodruff, S.C. The Blood Connection will also be there from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. conducting a blood drive. For more information call the daycare at 864-476-2065. An account has been set up in Dusty’s name at Arthur State Bank, as well.
The event isn’t just to raise money, though, the Ashmores said. At the clinic, they have seen many other families struggling with cancer. “It could have been anybody’s child,” they said, and they feel a need to let everyone else know how important it is to take children to the doctor and get check - ups and support blood and marrow banks and research.
For the support, “we’re thankful from the bottom of our hearts and souls,” Leila said.
“He’s a fighter,” Dustin, Sr., said, “so we’re going to fight with him. Hopefully, he’ll come up swinging and we’ll be able to help everyone else who’s fighting.”
shipman.news@gmail.com
“Diggin’ Day for Dustin”
Rain or Shine
Bright Beginnings Daycare
129 MacArthur St., Woodruff, S.C.
864-476-2065
Yard Sale: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Bake Sale: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Blood Connection Blood Drive: 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
An account is set up in Dustin’s name at Arthur State Bank. All donations greatly appreciated.
www.caringbridge.org/visit/dustyashmore
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