05/31/2026
Good morning 🌞 Ryder fans!
I try not to over post, since life lately has been on repeat. Labs, chemo, blood transfusions, platelet transfusions. But lately we've kinda been home enjoying not so many appointments. Ryder finished up his second phase of High risk bcell ALL treatment. We are done with consolidation! And man OH man was consolidation ROUGH on Ryders little body. We finished up with a bone marrow biopsy on Wednesday and Ryder will be heading into immunotherapy this week. We will be admitted to the hospital and staying there while they keep an eye on how well his body is responding to immunotherapy. We will come home and Ryder will be connected to a pump for 28 days 24/7. He will continuously be infused with immunotherapy.
With that being said, we've been so so busy lately. Ryder started physical therapy, his big brother Jason turned 15! And his big sister graduated from two schools this week. We are beyond proud of this girl and how well she was able to keep her grades up, and even made hard sacrifices for our family this year. She gave up softball, which she has played since she was 6, and decided not to be in the musical due to how much time it takes to put in for an amazing show. Bone marrow biopsies can take between 3 days - 2 weeks. But, you already know as a mother of a child with cancer 🎗️ I had already logged into his MyChart about 40 times on Friday. We got to go out to eat at our favorite restaurant to celebrate Alyssaa Ratliff. My home away from home, and let me tell you how bad I've been missing Old South Smokehouse. We sat down and immediately Ryder put his head on the table because, he's just so tired. He doesn't have much energy these days, and when he does he can play outside for maybe an hour or two. He wanted to play on my phone while we were ordering. We got our favorite fried pickles and Smokehouse fries and Ryder handed me my phone because it was ringing. University of Maryland, originally I thought it was just another appointment reminder since I had already got two that day. BUT, something told me to answer. His doctor immediately asked if I had a few minutes to talk to sit down.
Ryder has 4 oncology doctors that rotate and each see him pretty regularly. They are all very different. Some have better suggestions when we can't seem to get the pills down, 1 continuously prays with us at each appointment, 1 is from Perryville, went to all Perryville schools and she relates to us being from our home town. And the other one has been with us since day 1. She gave us the diagnosis. She sat us down during the hardest day of our lives and told us something no parent ever wants to hear, she has also been the one to take 95% of my calls when I have to call the emergency number. It's seems like she's always on-call when something happens.
Now, the phone rang and his doctor that lived in Perryville her whole life told me a fax just came through to their office and said every single one of his doctors and nurse practitioners are in the room cheering because as of Friday, May 29th Ryder is officially in REMISSION 🧡 🧡 .MRD- NEGATIVE (measurably residual disease) negative. I screamed. I balled like a baby. I'm sure the whole restaurant heard me scream. Jason had to tell me to calm down. We made 2 phone calls at the table to family, and Ryder wanted to run over and tell his favorite school secretary the amazing news! Just a coincidence her family was out eating at the same place. So not only did we get to celebrate Alyssa on all of her achievements, but we got to celebrate Ryder as well.
Now that you've got this far, you're probably asking what's next? Unfortunately absolutely nothing changes. Ryder will continue to stay on chemo for the next 2 1/2 years. Leukemia is sneaky, it likes to come back and very quickly.
What I haven't shared with everyone the last 4 grueling months is, leukemia has many types, and subtypes, and in those subtypes everyone has different mutations. Ryders official type is high risk B cell ALL, PH-like. PH-LIKE Is one of the rarer types, it's only prevalent in 10%-15% of pediatric patients. It's one of the harder ones to treat. It doesn't respond well and all the literature says is, it has a very high relapse rate.
So with ALL that said, Ryder was able to see his big sister graduate 🎓 twice! And our family will keep trucking through this evil cancer. We are not done fighting, and we will never give up this fight. Ryder is strong but he's gotta stay strong.
Ride for Ryder Community Roll-A-Thon fundraiser is going to be a blast! We cannot wait until June 14th. So many amazing people in our lives and businesses have put together some fun! Please come out to support Ryder while he still fights this beast, and please don't stop praying 🙏, we need all the prayers to get through this. He will continue to feel sick from chemo, tired and there will be days he won't want to do anything, but my boy needs to continue to push through. We WILL see our boy get on his dirt bike again, and ride like he always has.
