With just weeks to live, 2-year-old Logan Stevenson will stand as best man in his parents' wedding this Saturday. Pennsylvania couple Christine Swidorsky and Sean Stevenson were planning to marry next year, but moved their wedding up so that Logan could be memorialized in the photos. Their toddler–who was born at just three pounds–has suffered multiple bouts with cancer and at this stage has been deemed untreatable by doctors. On July 26, it was determined that he would only make it another one to two weeks.
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After Logan was born in October 2011, he remained in the hospital for a time as he struggled with eating. Once home, he appeared to be thriving up until shortly after his first birthday, when his mother noticed that he wasn't himself and that his lips and fingernails had turned white. Over the course of a month and several visits to doctors at the Pittsburgh children's hospital, Logan was diagnosed with fairly advanced leukemia and chemotherapy treatments were started immediately. Around the same time, Swidorsky and Stevenson learned that their son also had a genetic disorder called Fanconi anemia that would mostly likely cause him to die from cancer between the ages of 25 and 30. The couple was devastated.
But little Logan pulled through and received a blood stem cell transplant which put him in remission for nine months. Sadly, at that point he once again begin to exhibit strange behaviors. His cancer had returned and caused a large mass to develop on one of his kidneys. Doctors removed the entire kidney and followed up with chemo treatments twice a week. The family was finally able to return to normal life, but after just a few months the mass returned–this time, Logan's doctors were not optimistic about his recovery, and told his parents that they believed any treatment would do more harm than good.
As I sit here typing in tears, I cannot even fathom what Logan's parents and older sisters have been going through during bittersweet week. I applaud them for not only planning a last-minute wedding, but also doing everything in their power to make sure Logan is a part of it and that he is comfortable and happy throughout. They are setting such an amazing example of true faith and what it means to be a family–an example for their children and for the community at large. I hope that their big day is everything they want it to be and that they are able to create memories with little Logan that none of them will ever be able to forget.
Image via CNN.com
