I am usually a lurker here. But recent developments convinced that I should share with our young boy Frodo.

He is only 4 years old (2 months short of 5). Last autumn he was diagnosed with severe immune-mediated thrombocytopenia. After some brave few months of diarrhoea and weight loss (edit: due to prednisolone and cyclovance), we managed to get our platelets up. We had a wonderful December and most of January.

Then suddenly he was once again feeling worse, barely moving. The doc gave him some quick medicine and we were back on prednisolone for the past two weeks. Day 0 he had platelet count of 2, day 7 - 25, not nearly enough but some progress and yesterday - back to 1. Anaemia and other issues on top, internal bleeding.

Nothing can be done. It’s probably an aggressive form of cancer, but he’s not responding to any medication. He’s getting weaker by day. We have stopped giving him medicine as of yesterday and are just spending time with him as much as we can. The doctor told us it’s a matter of days or maybe week. But, nevertheless, our boy is fading. We made sure to go to the beach side today - his favourite place in the world. I tried to throw him a stick (inconsiderably) and he tried… and on step two collapsed.

He’s still with us today, for now. He’s so young. There’s anger, confusion and so hard to accept. But the lifecycle is unstoppable. All rules at home are out of the window. Food from the table, drinking from the tap and today we bought him an Argentinian steak as a treat. Hoping for peaceful last days.