- JJ is very rambunctious and outgoing. Definitely shy at first. - A ball of joy. He loves tubing with his sisters. Loves playing with his dirt bike toys and jumping on the trampoline
and chasing the goats around now that we have farm animals. - My name's Anthony and
I like to get called JJ. I like to ride my dirt bike and play with my friends. When I grow up, I wanna be a
race car driver and mechanic. - When we first got the
diagnosis of JJ's symptoms, I was scared. It's the only thing that
sca
red me in my life. It was terrifying. - [Danielle] It was a
lot, it was stressful, it was heartbreaking. - Six months in of him being
born, he kept on getting sick, so he went to the hospital
every time he got sick and they finally said he
needs to have a transplant to take care of him. Otherwise, he had to be
on a neutropenia shot for the rest of his life. - It was just kind of always
in the back of my mind that he could possibly have
what I had, neutropenia. They never confirmed or
denied that
it was congenital, that I was born with it
and being transplanted, there's no way to obviously
go back and figure that out. I remember what I went through and I wasn't ready for my
baby to go through that yet. - I had her move into
the hospital with JJ, so she wasn't gonna work no more. She was gonna stay there 24/7. I didn't want her driving back and forth. - A lot of sacrifices were
made on both of our ends and my loss of income as a
hairstylist in California, we don't get disability or FMLA.
- I worked 60 plus hours a week. I was always at work or at the hospital or at home taking care of the dogs, commuting from San Francisco to Oakley to Martinez like every day. - It was hard with my
husband being across the bay, having to go to work five days a week, keep health insurance going. - Really hard not being
able to be with him because that's all I
thought about at work. It's an emotional roller coaster that you're going through. Financially, it's a hard
hit that you don't realize unt
il it actually happens to you. - Digging ourselves deeper
and that snowball effect of are we ever gonna get out of this hole? As the medical bills started coming in and the PGE still needed to be paid and the mortgage while living
in the area on one income. - I was going to do whatever it took to make sure he was gonna be taken care of and my family was gonna be okay. It was a tough situation. - After we found out that we
were approved for the grant to provide us with some
financial assistance,
it definitely relieved some
of the financial stress that we were enduring. - Just to drop my shoulders
and sleep comfortably and not worry about
where I'm gonna come up with this next 100 hours of overtime that I was gonna try to make. When we got our grant, I was actually able to move into the hospital for a month. - The support that we
received made us relieved and we're very lucky to
have a lot of support. - The grants is what saved us, honestly. Just a weight lifted off 'cause it was my son'
s life
right on my shoulders now. - Fortunate enough, not only
did he have a perfect donor, we had the picture perfect
transplant as well. He didn't skip a beat. The rambunctious sweet boy that he is remained in good spirits
pretty much the whole time. - He's doing really well. He loves his new school. He loves our new house. He helps me work on my race car. He races dirt bikes. Helps his sisters. He's a great little and big brother. Annoying one, like usual. - We started to see a
glimpse of som
e normalcy in our life again. Being able to take him to
his favorite drag races and he got to hear all the vroom vrooms and watch all the cars and seeing him in his
element was something I was afraid I would never get to see. - But he's doing amazing now and I can only be so thankful for that.
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