Yaseen's Story

On the 26th of December 2020 Boxing Day, we were at grandma’s house with all the cousins enjoying the holidays.

When suddenly Yaseen looked very yellow and pale and we knew something wasn’t right, so we called 111 and got an out-of-hours GP appointment. When we arrived at the GP, he ignored our concerns about Yaseen, he was telling my partner that his colour was fine and that’s his colour in we argued and said were not leaving until you do a blood test, the doctor then replied he wouldn’t be able to to to to do that at the surgery as he doesn’t have the equipment so we said to him can you send us to A&E with a letter to have an urgent blood test done for your Yaseen.

We then left with a useless piece of paper saying parents were asking for a blood test, but there was no cause for concern by the GP.

Once we arrived at the A&E department at our local hospital, we had to wait several hours to be seen. When we were seen it was a junior Doctor who done all his checks and said Yaseen was fine, we disagreed and said there was something wrong and we would like a blood test done.

The doctor agreed to do a blood test, but it was a finger prick test, so we then had to wait for the results to come back after a couple of hours the results were back, and the doctor called us in to speak to us about the results and assured us that everything was fine and Yaseen is okay, there’s nothing to worry about and we were sent home.

We took Yaseen home as days went by Yaseen was deteriorating, he was bedbound, he was like a corpse that couldn’t move, and he lost so much weight It was scary to look at him, so we decided to take him back to A&E once again and spoke to them that we were in on boxing day and we are very concerned about Yaseen and how pale and yellow he looked and we had a finger pick test done we were sent home by the junior doctor and he said there was nothing to worry about and now we’re back here as my child is like a lifeless body and no one is listening to us they then took a blood test from his arm and we were waiting for the results to come back.

It was then that a registrar came into the room to tell us that they were sorry that Yaseen had Cancer Leukaemia, the registrar also apologised that they should’ve picked it up on the finger prick test that his blood levels were low, they should’ve kept him in then.

On the 4th of January 2021, our world shattered that day everything froze for us, Yaseen was kept overnight in the local hospital he had a blood transfusion that night and was regularly checked by the doctors and nurses, my partner and I stayed overnight with Yaseen, we had to leave our daughter with the grandparents, she was 1 year old at the time as parents it was very difficult.

The next day we met with the Oncology Nurses who would be taking care of Yaseen in the hospital and then we were transported to Great Ormond Street Hospital, Yaseen was examined, and had lots of tests done and more blood was taken from him to be sure and then we were told what treatment plan he would be on.

On the 6th Of January 2021, Yaseen was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) by Great Ormond St Hospital, the treatment will take three years, from that day to the present Yaseen is been ongoing Chemotherapy, is almost at the end of treatment, it’s been a long journey for all of us as it all started during covid which was a very hard time as only one parent was allowed to be with Yaseen at the hospitals and everything was either by telephone or videos calls as a family we felt alone as Yaseen was high-risk patient but watching Yaseen be so brave and strong helped as all to be brave and strong too. And we can say it's been a hard but beautiful journey as our little boy has come a very long way and has embraced his cancer journey like a total superhero and we can say we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

To be honest writing this has been very hard to put into words as there’s so much more to tell and share

Thank you