My name is James Ranahan and I was recently cured from APML leukemia in January 2020.
I published a book about my journey with cancer.
I went through a lot, and just for starters, I was diagnosed as 100% Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia. That means all of my bone marrow cells in my body, were cancer cells. I got a lot of prayer, support, love, and donations from a community that I wasn’t originally from. I was born in New Hampshire, September of 1998.
I am still blown away at the fact that my entire high school wore “#JamesStrong” T-shirts they made to raise money for me and did so much for me and all I was doing was playing football on the practice team my sophomore summer of high school.
I was diagnosed with cancer after my uncle said it looked like I had been in a car wreck with all of the bad bruises that my body was covered in. I thought nothing much from that because I was playing a contact sport, and playing lineman, there was plenty of contact. After a very long doctors visit where they stayed open later than the normal time and having to go straight to the emergency room, I was in for the cancer ride that did not sign up for.
I was diagnosed with cancer and I had no idea what it was. I just knew that I was sick, and I was stuck in the hospital. Cancer not only affected me physically, mentally, and spiritually, it also affected my family and everyone around me.
So with everything that I went through, and not knowing what was going to be ahead, this book is definitely a first hand experience about cancer. It’s actually a two part book, I tell about my story and perspective on my cancer story, and my mom’s perspective as she watched the horror unfold right before her eye. She kept a journal about me two days before my sixteenth birthday, all the way up until the day we got to go home from the hospital for the first time in three months, which to me, felt like a lifetime.
So far, I’ve been the front page of my local newspaper, met other people who went through similar things, joined cancer support groups and I will be meeting someone who is currently at Riley’s hospital for children that’s also sixteen, just like I was, and they’re using my book as a guide of what’s to come.
That is why I’m doing this, that is why I wrote my book. To help other people understand, deal with, comprehend, what just cancer is, and what it is to a patient and for a patient’s parent.
My book is available everywhere!!!!
Born in New Hampshire, September of 1998, James was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia at 16. In 2020 he made a full recovery and now spreads awareness and helps others understand what it's like to be a young cancer patient.
You can find his book here.
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