Middletown Boy Facing Leukemia Buoyed By Friends, Family And NJ Devils

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — It was a surreal moment Martina Ferguson says she will never forget.

It was an afternoon this past May and the Middletown mom was watching her son, 8-year-old RJ, and a friend play in the backyard when the call came in from the Rutgers Cancer Institute.

"We learned the reason for your son's pain," the oncologist said, as Ferguson watched the children from the kitchen window. "The tests came back. He has acute lymphoblastic leukemia."

"It was like everything was real and yet didn't feel real at the same time," she recalled this week. "When the other boy's mom came to pick him up from the play date, she saw my face and asked if everything was OK. I told her no. No, it's not."

May 4, 2022 changed the Fergusons.

The family of five live on Four Winds Drive consists of Martina, her husband Jason, both 44, their two teenage daughters, who attend Middletown High School South, and RJ, now 9-years-old and in the fourth grade at Nut Swamp Elementary.

RJ, the baby of the family, is an avid lover of all things sports: He plays lacrosse and jujitsu, is a member of Lincroft Little League and loves NJ Devils ice hockey.

For the active child, his mysterious pains began about a year and a half ago.

"It was the strangest thing," Martina Ferguson said. "He would wake up in the middle of the night crying: His legs hurt, his arms hurt, his muscles hurt. At first, of course, we thought growing pains. But it did not stop, night after night. And RJ is not a complainer, so for him to wake up crying ... I just knew something was really wrong."

For the next year, doctors provided no real answers. Most told her it was most likely growing pains and would go away, she said. Some doctors thought juvenile rheumatoid arthritis; another suggested chronic multifocal osteomyelitis, themselves both serous, incurable diseases.

Then the pain started appearing in the daytime, too.

"When he would come home from sports, he would complain of pain: His elbow hurt, his knee, his ankle, his wrist," said Jason Ferguson. "He had this whole complicated surgery on his elbow last year because the doctors thought he had a bone infection. He couldn't play Little League that season because his arm was in a cast. After that elbow surgery, we thought we had it licked."

It was in late April of this year that RJ walked in the door from the Lincroft Little League field and collapsed. He could not walk, said his mother. His legs and knees were in crippling pain.

"By that point, I had just had it. I was like, I cannot deal with this anymore. We are getting some answers," Martina Ferguson said. "I threw him in the car, and we just drove north up to Robert Wood Johnson (University Hospital)."

RJ was admitted to the hospital for a full-body MRI and blood tests, plus a bone marrow biopsy.

The oncologist called her a few days later, May 4. The bone marrow biopsy came back.

Treatment Begins

"RJ's ninth birthday was two days later, May 6," said Martina. "Usually they start treatment for pediatric cancers immediately, but the doctors told us to celebrate his birthday and then start treatment the immediate next day."

Currently, RJ is just one quarter of the way through a two-year protocol of cancer treatment: He received very intense daily chemotherapy at first, which gradually will taper off to be given once every nine weeks. He also takes a regimen of up to 13 pills a day, plus steroid shots.

RJ can only go to school at Nut Swamp four days a week, and only in the mornings, because he is otherwise up at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick receiving chemotherapy. Most days, he is also too exhausted to make it through a whole day of fourth grade, his mother said. He has a port in his chest to receive the chemotherapy, and once a month he has to get a lumbar puncture in his spine for the most intense chemo.

"The doctors told us the cure rate percentages for this type of cancer are very good," Martina Ferguson said. "They told us that they caught RJ's cancer extremely early, and that's why it was so difficult to diagnose at first. It was not showing up in blood tests."

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common childhood cancer and the cure rate for children is about 80 percent, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

"RJ is going to beat this," Jason Ferguson said.

Both Jason and Martina said they try to keep things as normal as possible for RJ and his older sisters. The doctors told them that keeping a child's metal health and mood high is very important as he fights the cancer. RJ is very tired most days, but he perks up when his father suggests throwing a baseball around in the backyard, or picking up the lacrosse sticks.

"It was very frustrating for him because he used to be so good at sports, but now the chemo and steroids have affected his coordination and his running. It's been very hard for him," said Martina. "But RJ actually told me he would rather keep getting the chemotherapy if it meant not having that pain come back again. That's how bad the leg pain was this past spring."

Martina tells her son this is only temporary.

"Someday you will be back out there playing sports again," she said.

Night On The Ice

Another thing to help take his mind off his diagnosis was a trip to see professional hockey. On Nov. 21 RJ joined the NJ Devils on the ice for their Hockey Fights Cancer Night, in collaboration with RWJBarnabas Health. RJ and his family watched the Devils take a 5-2 victory against the Edmonton Oilers at the Prudential Center in Newark.

A "huge" Devils fan, RJ got to read the starting line-up in the locker room before the game, participate in a ceremonial puck drop and meet his favorite Devils player, Jesper Bratt.

"It was so special," said Martina.

Prior to tonight's game, RJ helped Brendan Smith with tonight's starting lineup! #HockeyFightsCancer | #NJDevils pic.twitter.com/WdwkIhXxf7
— New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) November" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/NJDevils/s... 22, 2022