John was just about to celebrate his second birthday when he started feeling unwell during a family trip to Paris. What seemed like the flu quickly took a serious turn. At a children’s hospital overseas, John was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow.
John’s condition had deteriorated so quickly while in France that he was too sick to board a commercial flight home.
With the help of Texas Children’s Hospital’s International Team, the family was able to effectively communicate with doctors in both countries and fly John home, literally landing in America and heading straight to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.
“When we got in contact with the international team, which at the time I had no idea they had an international team, but now I understand why,” Sarah Jungels said, “They were able to kind of keep in contact with the physicians and trying to help with our insurance, give us letters from even Texas Children’s physician or the oncology doctor on-call and like [explain] this child needs to come in on a medical flight.”
Dr. Lauren Scherer, John’s pediatric oncologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, explains, “We have great treatments for ALL, and we’ve really revolutionized care in the last few years. We can tailor therapy to each case, so his outcomes should be really great.”
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