Updated: Mar 28
At two years old, Rowan was a super happy baby living with her family near Dallas, Texas. When she became lethargic and started having trouble breathing, her parents took her to an urgent care facility thinking she had a bad cold. However, she was quickly taken to the PICU and she was starting chemotherapy treatments the next night for Pre-B Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.
Rowan spent six weeks as an inpatient at the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and needed to be intubated for more than two weeks to help her breathing. She started the induction phase of her chemotherapies and steroids, and in the midst of treatment, her dad’s employment transferred the family to Virginia. “Of course, we were nervous about the continuum of treatment and how to navigate a new hospital system, but the ASK staff greeted us and made us feel welcome as we entered the new doors,” says Rowan’s mom, Devon. “We didn’t know anyone in our new town, and were new to Children’s Hospital of Richmond, but ASK made us feel like family immediately.”
In December 2021, Rowan finished two and a half years of chemo and continues to improve each day. “She’s come so far in the last two years,” continues Devon, “but she lost a lot of muscle and experienced neuropathy as a result of being intubated for so long. Although she’s still walking with the help of orthotic braces and has some limited vision in one eye due to the leukemia, she continues to amaze us with what she can do and her constant improvement.”
"We didn’t know we could ask for help, and yet they were there to offer exactly what we needed."
Rowan’s family arrived in the ASK Clinic in the midst of Covid restrictions, but that didn’t stop ASK from assisting the family financially, as well as spiritually and mentally with a variety of programs and services in Clinic. “They’ve helped with a few bills, and equally as important, helped us find our way in a new maze of optical, orthotic and neurological specialties. We didn’t know we could ask for help, and yet they were there to offer exactly what we needed.
“ASK staff is familiar with this crazy cancer world and is a wonderful resource for questions, connecting families so that we can lift and learn from one another, provide events to help us forget about childhood cancer for a short time, and just make us feel at home. They serve the entire family.”
Devon says she most appreciates that their care in the ASK Clinic is so personal, tailored exactly to their individual needs. “ASK has been an invaluable resource while going through the worst experience of our lives. Everyone remembers Rowan’s name and knows our family. This is something small that has a huge impact on our well-being. Our most chaotic moments of diagnosis and initial treatment were in Dallas, but because it was such a big hospital, we were just another patient. Here, I know that someone from the ASK Clinic has us covered. Thank you to the staff who deal with childhood cancer every day, and thank you to the donors of ASK who make everything possible. ASK has been our lifeline in Richmond!”