It all started with a limp. My wife and I thought that our four year old son (Shaan) was having growing pains when he was complaining about pain in his lower left leg.
On April 8th, 2010, my world was rocked when my son was diagnosed with Leukemia, which is a blood cancer.
Childhood cancer is extremely rare and since there was no history of cancer in either of our families, this hit me like a freight train going 1,000 kilometers an hour.
There were over a million questions racing through my mind such as what, where, when, why and how? There is no reason why leukemia happens in children and in some cases, babies are even born with it.
They immediately started chemotherapy treatment on Shaan and started looking at what specific type of Leukemia had started in his body.
Thank God he was diagnosed as having Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), which is considered a “good” blood cancer in terms of treatment. The cure rate is as high as 90% with proper treatment.
I cancelled all my travel plans and Internet marketing activities. I cancelled my trip to System Seminar in Chicago. I cancelled my presentation at the Magic Bullet Seminar and dropped out of Jeff Johnson’s “Traffic Voodoo” course as one of the content providers.
I also cancelled my MobiBlueprint product launch.
Nothing seemed to matter to me anymore.
I stayed with my son every day and night since he was admitted on April 5th and after 43 days of being at the hospital, we both came home yesterday.
He has a long road ahead of him with an additional 22 months of treatment, but the prognosis looks good as he is now in remission.
Some of the things I learned from this experience:
1. No more spending 10 hours in front of the computer each day. Life is too short to spend in front of a monitor all day.
2. Money doesn’t mean much without health. Health is the real wealth.
3. No more complaining about paying taxes. Health care is free in Canada and the care that was provided for Shaan can’t be matched in terms of quality.
4. I need to restructure my business. As soon as I stopped working and disappeared, my employees were left twiddling their thumbs.
5. Charity. If the wealthiest people in the world just gave up 10% of their assets, it would solve problems such as world hunger. It is time for all of us who have been blessed with wealth to start giving more.
If you are a parent, I hope you NEVER have to go through this experience and if your child ever complains of any small aches or pains, get it checked immediately.
Shaan is a fighter and he will come out of this stronger.
Take care,
Gauher Chaudhry
