I am 8 years old and was diagnosed on 06/29/02 at the age of 3 1/2 with pre b-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with t-aml.  It's so hard to believe I'm finished with my treatment, my mommy didn't know how we would get past the first week.  I was born on 12/13/1998, they had to do a emergency cesarean section because I was positioned wrong and my heart rate was dropping fast.  I was the best baby you could ask for.  I never cried or made any fuss not even as a toddler.  I had intermittent fevers of 102 and above since birth.  Every time my mom called the pediatrician he would just tell her to give me some Motrin or Tylenol and keep an eye on me.  If the fever last more than three days he would say to bring me into the office.  Well the fevers never lasted that long 2 days tops.  About 4 weeks before I was diagnosed  I was having very high fevers on and off again for weeks.  One day I had a lot of pain in my arms and I couldn't raise my arms above my head my mom thought maybe I had broken my collar bone and took me into our local emergency room.  Once there they did some x-rays and found nothing wrong.  Mom was told that I might have strained something, so home we went.  One week later, nothing had changed my arms were still hurting really bad so back to the emergency room we went.  Again they took more x-rays and still didn't find anything wrong.  While in the ER my mom noticed some little red dots on and around my shoulder and in my mouth, mommy pointed them out to the doctor and he said the dots on my shoulder was a rash from the sun and the ones in my mouth were from me biting the insides of my mouth.  (Mommy knows now those little red dots were Petechiae pronounced (pet-tea-key-eye).  On the 22nd of June, 02 me and mommy went to a pool party at a friends house.  Mommy felt so bad for me that day, because I looked so sad and didn't want to swim or play with anyone.  Mom thought I was coming down with the flu.  One week later on June 29th, 02 (that's the day mommy's whole world fell apart) I was not feeling very well that morning I was very pale and wouldn't eat my breakfast (and for me not to eat that meant something had to be wrong). I always ate everything any anything, I would take food from my plate and stuff my little cheeks until no more would fit, it was almost like I wanted to save some for later.  I have two brothers and two sisters mommy wondered if I thought maybe they were going to take my food from me.  I was also very warm that morning, so instead of taking me to another one of our local ER's mommy decided to take me to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.  It was the longest day of her life.  When I got there I felt a lot better and didn't even have a fever anymore, but I still looked very pale.  The nurse came in and asked my mommy all kinds of questions (mommy's not even sure what they all were anymore) I know they asked her if we had traveled outside the united states.  Next they wanted blood samples from me mommy told them OK but they only had one chance to get the needle in  my vein.  Mommy had seen too many children being poked over and over again all because someone didn't know what they were doing or because they were new to drawing blood.  Well after a few hours the blood work finally came back and mommy couldn't believe what she heard from the doctor's (leukemia) mommy really didn't know much about it other than it was a cancer.  Then she asked why her little boy he never did anything wrong and didn't deserve this.  Mommy went into shock after hearing that I had cancer she really don't remember to much after that.  All she knew is that she wanted to take her sweet little boy home and say this was all a bad dream.  She asked herself over and over again what did she do wrong?  I had a white blood count of 167,400 my hemoglobin was 3.6 my platelets were 12,000 my red blood count was 1.50 and my ldh was 2895 so I was immediately diagnosed with High Risk Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia without even having a spinal tap or a bone marrow aspiration done.  The following day I was taken to the operating room where a medi port was placed in  my chest for venous access.  They also did a spinal tap at this time.  Analysis of my spinal fluid showed no evidence of meningeal disease.  I required a lot of packed red blood cells and platelet transfusions throughout my hospital stay which was 11 days.  I was put on POG #9905 Regimen A for standard risk leukemia.  I went from high risk to standard risk because they found an extra chromosome only in my leukemia cells.  I'm now in remission and I have completed 3 1/2 years of chemotherapy as of February 05.  Also I never lost my hair during chemo treatment, I must have very strong hair genes.  Mommy is still amazed everyday at how strong I am, she is very very proud of me.  Mommy can't believe that 4 years have gone by already.  Mommy says that I'm her LITTLE HERO!