Four-year-old Grant Melvin darts in and out of the room. When he smiles his big smile, his dimples firmly penetrate his cheeks.
He talks about turtles, live ones and a pet stuffed animal named Kirby. He demonstrates his toy light saber to visitors and makes the sound that a light saber from “Star Wars” would make. He fusses briefly when his mother takes off his white shirt so he can eat what may become a drippy popsicle.
Grant plays T-ball and has stenciled letters over his bed that spell “Giddy Up.”
Just like other kids, yet not.
Grant is one out of every 220,000 U.S. children aged 10 and younger diagnosed with a disease with a fancy name: Langerhan’s cell histiocytosis. A blood disorder that mimics cancer, this disease involves abnormal cells from the bone marrow and can travel from the skin to the lymph nodes. Grant undergoes chemotherapy every Thursday at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorder Center at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, where his physician is Dr. Louis Rapkin.
Today, in solidarity with Grant for his hair loss caused by the treatment, the public is invited to E.C. Pate Park in Harris County to get their heads shaved. If you don’t want to be that daring, you can simply donate to the foundation that supports research for this rare disease. StBaldricks.org was founded in 2000 in New York by three friends who began raising money for childhood cancer, and encouraged people to get their heads shaved to support kids with cancer.
“One-hundred percent of donations (to St. Baldrick’s) goes to research. His disease doesn’t get funding” by the government or other sources, said Melanie Melvin, the children’s director at St. Mark United Methodist Church. Though her son is the honored guest today, the main focus is to draw attention to Grant’s disease and to raise money for the foundation.
Like a turtle
Melanie Melvin and her husband, Chad Melvin, who works at Aflac, first noticed their son’s symptoms last winter.
“He started limping. We just thought it was a twisted ankle,” said Melanie. His limp didn’t really go away. By the summer, while swimming in a pool, he got out and his back seemed to contort. It was also obvious to his sister, 9-year-old Gracie, who demonstrated how he walked that day. “Worst-case scenario, we thought it could be a slipped disk. He was still jumping off the diving board,” Melanie said.
Grant received X-rays and a CT scan. A radiologist at The Medical Center thought it could be the histiocytosis, but the Melvins were sent to Atlanta specialists to be sure. Eventually, the diagnosis came back as Langerhan’s. The disease is named for a German physician.
“His (form) is not life-threatening,” Melanie Melvin said. Typically, a child with the diagnosis grows out of it by his or her mid-teens. It is more prevalent in boys than girls. Since Grant’s diagnosis, Melanie has made friends with a family in Newnan who have a child with the same disease.
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