Meet Brayden

Brayden LaVallee was a happy and healthy baby boy in June 2013 when his parents, Elizabeth and Alex, made the trek from Rhode Island to New Hampshire with their 11-month old to visit Elizabeth’s parents.
What began as a joyous visit suddenly turned horribly wrong.

“One minute everything was fine, and then all of a sudden, Brayden become inconsolable, white as a ghost and extremely lethargic,” recalls Elizabeth. “We called 9-1-1 and he was airlifted to a nearby hospital—I can’t even put into words how frightened we were.”

After a barrage of tests, doctors at the hospital in Maine where Brayden was brought confirmed the little boy’s adrenal gland had ruptured and he was bleeding internally. And based on his age and the location of the rupture, they began additional tests to determine if the cause might be Neuroblastoma, a cancer that affects approximately 650 children under the age of 2 in the United States each year.
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Brayden tested negative for the dreaded disease on three separate tests. As a result, doctors were unsure what caused the rupture and concluded the mass they saw on scans was a pocket of blood that still remained from the baby’s ruptured adrenal gland. He underwent a blood transfusion to replace the blood he lost. The procedure was successful, and Elizabeth and Alex were told to follow-up at Hasbro Children’s Hospital three months later.
Once back in Rhode Island, Brayden seemed back to his normal self. His parents moved forward with the follow-up at Hasbro Children’s Hospital that October, meeting with doctors after Brayden underwent an ultrasound. The news was not good.
Laparoscopic surgery was immediately scheduled to investigate the mass and perform a biopsy. Then the call came: Brayden had stage III Neuroblastoma.

A course of treatment was quickly developed, including a bone marrow transplant which required the harvesting of Brayden’s stem cells, followed by radiation, and then five rounds of chemotherapy. Brayden’s 15 month-old body responded exceptionally well to the treatment, which eradicated 90 percent of his cancer. An additional surgery removed every remaining trace of the cancer and Brayden began his long road to recovery.

The next year was full of follow-up visits, tests, and anxiety. In December 2014, Brayden underwent another scan. And then the call came.

“I picked up the phone and began talking with Brayden’s doctor and he said, ‘Brayden’s clear, everything is fine—the cancer is gone,’” says Elizabeth. “I cried uncontrollably.”​
​Brayden has been cancer-free for more than 15 months and his prognosis looks excellent. He’ll turn 4 this summer and loves playing with Legos and any toy car or truck he can get his hands on.
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“From the minute we sat down with doctors at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, there wasn’t a single moment of doubt—we had all the confidence in the world in them,” says Elizabeth. “They saved my son’s life and nursed him back health; we’ll forever be grateful for what they’ve given our family.”
Photos courtesy of Hasbro Children's Hospital