5-year-old son of Aiken Department of Public Safety officer battling leukemia, help needed

AIKEN, S.C. (WJBF) – The 5-year-old son of Lt. Joe O’Conor with the Aiken Department of Public Safety is battling cancer, and the family is asking for help from the community.

Joey O’Conor’s symptoms started with fatigue.

“Everybody in our house had been sick about a month before the diagnosis, so we just assumed it was taking him a little bit longer to get over that,” Joe O’Conor said.

Then summer camp rolled around in June, a week after Joey’s birthday.

“They were at the pool and he started to like fall down and was not acting normal, was in an altered mental status basically,” O’Conor said. “When I got there he knew who I was, he knew his name and all, but he was laying on the ground and barely talking.”

Joey was rushed to the hospital and was later was diagnosed with leukemia.

“B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around what was going on,” O’Conor said. “We tried to explain it to him several times, you know your blood is sick, and tried to make him understand what was happening. But, for a five-year-old, that’s just really hard to understand.”

After a near 4-week stay at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia, Joey is back home, but still has to undergo treatment for up to three years.

“We know its a two-and-a-half to three year treatment cycle, but we won’t know the finer details until the end of this cycle where we know what his counts are in his bone marrow at the end of this month,” O’Conor said.

Since his white blood cell count is so low, he’s not allowed any visitors at this time.

He also won’t be able to start kindergarten in-person this year, but his school has a way for him to interact with the other kids.

“They’re gonna do basically Zoom kindergarten, so that he’ll get to participate with some kids his age,” O’Conor said. “Although it’ll be through a camera, at least that’ll be beneficial to him because I think that’s one of our biggest fears is for a five-year-old to not be able to interact with other kids for six to nine months.”

Community members, friends, family, coworkers and staff at ADPS have pitched in to make the journey as smooth as possible.

“They came in and remodeled Joey’s room and put in hardwood floors in his room so it’d be easier for us to clean,” O’Conor said. “They’ve sent him I don’t even know how many gift baskets and stuffed animals and everything else. It’s been the most humbling experience of my life just to see everybody come together for that little guy.”

But, the medical bills are adding up and the family started a GoFundMe for support.

“We don’t like to ask for help, especially when there’s so many people in our community that need help. But, that being said, we also were not expecting to have this diagnosis,” O’Conor said. “If there is anything left over, our plan is to just donate that money to another child with a similar diagnosis to Joey or to leukemia research.”

Joey will have some more blood tests on Friday. Click here to donate to his GoFundMe.

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