BY DIANA WALLACE Daily Herald Staff Writer
Six-year-old Travis Yon and his family assembled in their Hoffman Estates home Monday and said a prayer thanking God they'd reached that day.
Nearly four months after Travis received a bone marrow transplant in Milwaukee to treat a rare form of leukemia - four months the family spent living in one room at a nearby Ronald McDonald House - the Yons finally returned home to Hoffman Estates this week.
"I was stunned," Travis' mother, Melanie Goldish, said of being told the family could return home. "Four months of trying to keep plodding forward. Four months of so much anxiety and so much intensity. And then, like a light switch, it is proclaimed by our doctor we're going home."
Since his diagnosis last spring, Travis' illness has activated a nationwide support network of people who've been kept up to date on his condition through his own web site (www.keeptrying.com) and regular e-mail reports from Goldish and Travis' father, Joe Yon.
Bone marrow drives held in Travis' honor to find donors for him and other needy patients have been held in several states besides two in Hoffman Estates. Those have resulted in at least seven other patients finding suitable donors.
A match for Travis himself was located last summer. Following his September transplant - a dangerous and debilitating procedure - he endured countless hospitalizations, dozens of transfusions and a series of setbacks and complications.
Now, his blood counts are slowly returning to normal levels and he's recovering from a serious bladder infection.
But while Travis is out of the hospital, he's not out of the woods. He must still return to Milwaukee for weekly clinic visits and continues a rigorous program of medications. There also remains a real risk that the cancer could return.
And because even a minor bug could be life- threatening, Travis won't be allowed contact with other children, or get to eat in a restaurant, for at least several more months.
Despite the precautions, Goldish and Yon are hopeful Travis will get to start kindergarten in the spring at Whiteley Elementary School in Hoffman Estates, where each one of his classmates made him a birthday card when he turned 6 in November.
The family is cautiously optimistic about the future - a trip to Israel is planned in late 1999 or early 2000 - but recognizes that only a battle, but not the war, has been won.
And in the midst of everything, the Yons continue efforts to educate others about the importance of becoming a bone marrow donor to help other families facing the same battle.
Indeed, Joe Yon spent Wednesday morning donating his own platelets at a blood- supply clinic.
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