London Hamilton has been through more in her 10 years on this planet than some folks will ever experience. For nearly two years London has been battling Ewing sarcoma, a type of cancer that begins as a growth of cells in the bones and the soft tissue around the bones. Throughout her battle London has received 65 transfusions of blood, platelets, and plasma in addition to her 14 rounds of chemotherapy and a month of radiation. London is now in remission, but her road to getting there was anything but easy for her and her family.
“This is important, this is something I'm passionate about because it's telling the story that we've been through,” Carley Hamilton, London’s mother, said. “Telling everybody how blood donations have actually saved London's life and can save other people’s lives.”
In the summer of 2022 London began feeling back pain. She told Carley about the pain and after some Tylenol didn’t resolve it, they went to the doctor where London was diagnosed with severe constipation, nearly a bowel obstruction. After treatment for the constipation London still dealt with back pain from time to time before the severity of what she was facing revealed itself that December.
London approached her mother, Carley, in the kitchen and Carley knew something was off. “She just had this look to her, so I had her sit in my lap, and she had a seizure sitting there in my lap,” Carley said of that day in December. London also suffers from epilepsy, but this seizure was different, she wasn’t coming out of it. London’s father, Nick, called 911 and the paramedics got London to the hospital where she eventually came out of the seizure only to have her back pain return with a newfound intensity.
“It was different. London was screaming about how much it hurt and crying,” Carley said. After bringing it to the attention of the ER doctor and some pleading, they ran a CT scan on London, that’s when the mass in her ribs was discovered.
London was transferred to Akron Children’s Hospital and had a biopsy, then on December 13 the diagnosis was made, London had Ewing sarcoma. As the family began preparing to battle the cancer London went to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus to get a PET scan. The scan that revealed the tumor was nonmetastatic and localized to her rib area, and shortly after Christmas London had her port placed so she could begin her chemotherapy.
The next few months saw London undergo her chemotherapy treatments as planned, with occasional fever spikes or trips to get an infusion to help with maintaining healthy levels. At the start London was set for 12 rounds of chemotherapy. Things were routine for London until her surgery where the doctors planned to remove the tumor.
During the surgery, doctors removed three ribs and the tumor, unfortunately testing the soft tissue near where the tumor was showed evidence of cancer remaining in London’s body, causing an adjustment to the plans. London’s medical team added radiation along with two extra rounds of chemotherapy. Before that updated plan could start London had to recover from her surgery, which proved to be another battle entirely.
The oncologist discovered that London was nearing sepsis and was suffering from inflammation of the brain, causing an altered mental state for her. Over the next three weeks London remained hospitalized, recovering from the surgery and the infection that brough on the sepsis. Upon release from the hospital London had difficultly getting back to her normal physical activity.
“Every time we got her up for physical therapy her heart rate would jump,” Carley said. “Something wasn’t right, come to find out London had actually broken a bone in her lower back.” London was diagnosed with osteopenia due to the chemotherapy weakening her bones. London’s road to recovery now included a broken vertebrae on top of her surgery and infection recovery. Once she was in a good place to begin radiation the doctors got that treatment underway.
Throughout July, every Monday through Friday, London’s family took her up to Akron for her radiation treatments in addition to her chemotherapy treatments, and during one visit London spiked a fever. “By this point she’s not bearing weight,” Carley remembered. “When I picked her up to help her from the wheelchair to the bed she said her back hurt, so I lifted up her shirt and saw the surgical incision had broken open.”
The re-opened incision was the beginning of a whole new issue for London as she was suffering from the early stages of radiation burn. As the burn developed it turned into a blister covering half of her back. Coming off the surgery and infection recovery, the broken vertebrae in her back, the radiation and chemotherapy treatments and now a radiation burn, London’s body struggled to heal and return to anything resembling normal.
“That’s where a lot of her transfusions came from,” Carley recalled. London struggled to get her counts back up after each setback and she needed her levels up to receive more chemo, so she received consistent transfusions to aid her in her battle.
London’s radiation treatment ended in August, and she continued receiving her chemotherapy treatments trying to finish off the remaining cancer in her body. “We spent a lot of holidays in the hospital,” Carley said. Things normalized, somewhat, as the radiation burn healed and London continued treatment before a fall in January 2024 left London with a broken femur. “Because of how harsh the sarcoma chemo is it badly affected her bones to where her bones were greatly weakened. Every single bone has osteopenia and she’s at risk for having osteoporosis right now.”
The broken femur resulted in another hospital stay for London where she battled infections and needed more transfusions, but due to declining donations during the holiday season there was a shortage of blood products. Because of this shortage London had to wait eight hours for platelets, and 18 hours for blood, the longest she’d ever had to wait during her 14 months of treatments.
As London healed from her broken femur and the infections, things took a turn for the better. “When she was hospitalized we had done a CT scan of her chest because she needed oxygen,” Carley recalled of this last hospital stay. “The CT came back with no evidence of the disease.” Shortly after leaving the hospital London finished her final chemotherapy treatment and is awaiting a final PET scan to confirm that the cancer is gone.
“I can’t even begin to describe it, like she is a whole new level of strong, courageous, just all out make you laugh on your worst days, even though she feels like crap herself,” Carley said of her daughter, reflecting on her battle with cancer.
The American Red Cross partnered with London’s family to host a blood drive where 132 people came out to donate, 120 units were collected and 50 of those donors were first time donors. “I never really understood the importance of blood donation until we started this cancer journey and to see how much it really saved London’s life,” Carley said, thinking back on the journey.
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