Ten-year-old Tucker Olen loves to build with Lego bricks and go hiking in the woods, and he's getting used to going to the Tomorrow Fund Clinic for cancer treatments.
"There were signs leading up to it," said Tucker's father, John Olen.
"I had bruises on my legs and I was feeling tired," Tucker said.
Then, Tucker was in an accident last summer.
"Well, he got knocked over in a wagon and cut his knee. And in 48 hours, the knee had blown up to about the size of an apple around the cut. So, you could definitely tell it was becoming infected," John Olen said.
A trip to the doctor's office led to a blood test and a diagnosis of leukemia. It was very disturbing news to Tucker's dad.
"Well, when I went to high school, I had a friend in high school that had leukemia. He passed a couple years after we graduated. So, I didn't have very good memories of leukemia," John Olen said.
But doctors say it has become a more curable disease.
In the 1960s, very few children survived.
"Now the numbers are approaching 80 percent of kids. Some of the good risks 90 percent cure rates. So, the outcomes are incredibly good," said Dr. Cindy Schwartz of Hasbro Children's Hospital.
The course of treatment is better and less toxic.
A year of chemotherapy and Tucker is half-way through treatment.
"Sometimes I feel not great ... and then sometimes I feel really good," Tucker said.
But not all kids with leukemia are cured, and there are other cancers. Brain tumors -- the second most common cancer in children -- are difficult to treat.
"Partly because they're in the brain and so everything with such a delicate area and you don't want to do damage to the brain," Schwartz said.
Some pediatric cancers are baffling.
"There are some that are just very, very difficult to treat. We give as much as we can in treatment and occasionally we do get somebody who makes it from it. But we just are struggling with some of them," Schwartz said.
That's why research is so necessary.
"We really have to do this research locally, and we have to do it with the group nationally so that we can advance care," Schwartz said.
One thing they are doing at Hasbro Children's Hospital is tracking children with cancer into their adult years. Tucker will be one of them.
"We tell them they can't get rid of us after this because we really need to know how they're doing," Schwartz said.
It's all about follow up to ensure these children remain healthy well in to their adult years. But it's also about research and collaborations.
Schwartz will soon be leading an international meeting of the minds in the field of leukemia.
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