IT’S something no parent should ever have to ask their child.
For Bailee Smith, 28, the question came when her little boy was just four years old. Did he want to keep fighting cancer, or stop treatment? It was a choice she felt he should make.
“His grandfather had recently passed away, which had helped him understand death,” Bailee, from Lubbock in Texas, US, tells Sun .
“‘Wyatt, you can either keep fighting,’ I told him. ‘Or, eventually, you’ll go to heaven, like Grandad’.
“He thought about it for a few seconds before saying, ‘I don’t want to do this any more. I just want to go home’.
“My heart shattered. But although I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, I knew that my boy was done.”
Wyatt was just four years old when he was . He’d been like every other toddler.
“My boy was Disneyland-obsessed, forever watching videos of the rides,” says Bailee.
“He longed to meet his heroes Spider-Man and Iron Man.”
When Bailee and her husband, Luis, 30, a car mechanic, were having their second baby, Isabella, in 2022, Wyatt was thrilled to be a big brother.
“Only, two years later, in 2023, he started acting out of sorts,” says Bailee, who says Wyatt was “tired all the time”.
“Working as a nurse, I wondered if he had anaemia, but iron supplements didn’t seem to make a difference.
“A month on, he was only getting worse, so doctors ran blood tests. Later, I had a call from a paediatrician.”
The paediatrician said Wyatt’s results were “all over the place” and she would refer him to an oncologist.
“The moment I heard that word [oncologist], my heart dropped,” says Bailee.
She asked if it was cancer, and the paediatrician told her honestly that it could be.
“It was a Friday, so we had to wait over the weekend for the referral,” says Bailee.
“Luis and I spent every moment with Wyatt, giving him cuddles and watching Bluey.
“It suddenly struck me how skinny he was.
“After we had an appointment with the oncologist, they gave me a call back.
“They told me to pick Wyatt up from school and bring him to hospital with an overnight bag.
“My hands shook as I packed our things and went to collect our boy.
“At hospital, my worst fears were confirmed. Wyatt had .”
He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).
Leukaemia, a blood cancer, is the under 15.
AML is a rare, aggressive and fast-progressing cancer of the white blood cells which affects around 100 children every year in the UK.
All types of blood cells – white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets – are produced by blood stem cells in the bone marrow. Usually, the stem cells make as many blood cells as we need to stay healthy.
In AML, this system goes wrong. The stem cells start to produce too many blood cells, too quickly and don’t develop properly.
Symptoms of AML usually develop over several weeks and worsen with time.
Common symptoms can include fatigue, bruising easily, bone or joint pain and frequent infections.
Wyatt’s diagnosis in 2023 meant he would , which started in October.
As Bailee fretted about how she would explain this to her little boy, she was reassured when a specialist at the hospital, trained to explain serious illness to small children, arrived.
“I could see he was scared,” says Bailee.
“After Wyatt’s bone marrow transplant, he was kept in isolation. His immune system was so weak, he couldn’t have contact with the outside world.
“I couldn’t even bring him a McDonald’s to cheer him up. All his food had to be prepared on site to avoid germs.
“While Luis stayed at home with Isabella, I remained by my boy’s side. After six weeks, he was well enough to go home.”
At first, Bailee says Wyatt was eating and playing like normal, and she hoped he would even be back at school within months.
They were cautiously hopeful – until, in 2024, Wyatt’s oncologist called to say there were some cells in his blood that looked worrying.
Common symptoms of childhood cancer
Common childhood cancer symptoms can include:
- Feeling very tired and exhausted all of the time and/or noticeable skin paleness
- Having lots of infections (such as ear, throat or chest) that don’t go away or keep coming back
- Having flu-like symptoms that don’t go away (such as lethargy, high temperature, being sick)
- Unexplained or excessive bleeding such as in urine, poo or when being sick
- Bruising easily or a rash of small red spots on the skin (called ‘petechiae’)
- Persistent and unexplained sweating or fever especially at night
- Aches and pains that don’t go away, especially in the bones, joints, back or legs, and may be worse at night
- Unexplained new limp or leg weakness
- Changes when going for a poo such as constipation, diarrhoea, pain or feeling of not having finished
- Feeling a lump, swelling or unusual firmness anywhere on the body, especially in the abdomen, neck, chest, pelvis or armpits
- Losing a significant and unexplained amount of weight in teenagers
- Slow growth in children
- Change in behaviour such as persistent crying and screaming in young children, sleeping a lot, being off food
Source: The Children & Young People’s Cancer Association
He needed another biopsy, and the doctor explained that if the cancer came back, it would be far harder to treat.
“I prayed for good , but tests confirmed the leukaemia had returned,” says Bailee.
“I sobbed on Luis. It wasn’t fair, he didn’t deserve it.
“Over the next few weeks, we discussed every possible treatment option.
“But the same type of chemotherapy wouldn’t work a second time, and a bone marrow transplant actually might do more harm than good.
“One evening, a doctor took me and Luis aside.
“‘We’re so sorry, we’re not going to be able to cure him,’ he explained.
“‘He can keep having chemo to prolong his life, but when he stops, the leukaemia will start taking over’.
“The news was impossible to take in. ‘I think the decision has to be Wyatt’s,’ I said.”
Bailee asked her son whether he wanted to keep trying treatment, or go to heaven like Grandad.
Once he heartbreakingly told her that he didn’t want to continue treatment, a tearful Bailee accepted it and told the paediatrician that his decision had to be respected.
“The following day, we were put in touch with the Make-A-Wish foundation,” says Bailee.
“I knew at once what Wyatt’s number one wish was going to be – Disneyland.
“Less than 24 hours later, we were flying out to California. Everyone along the way made it so special for Wyatt.
“Wyatt was on cloud nine as he posed with his hero, Iron Man.
“At home, two-year-old Isabella started sleeping in bed with Wyatt every night.
“As a family, we did everything we could to make him happy.
“But sadly, he started deteriorating, losing his appetite and sleeping through the day.”
The couple were on autopilot, “just trying to keep going” with the every couple of days.
But one day, Wyatt’s let his mum know that the end was nearing.
“One afternoon, Wyatt looked up at me from bed,” she remembers.
“‘I’ve been seeing Grandad coming to visit,’ he told me. I knew then that the moment we’d been dreading was nearing.
“‘Are you sure you don’t want to restart chemo?’ I asked him. He shook his head firmly.”
One morning, six months after Disneyland, Wyatt woke up in a lot of pain.
“He was refusing oxygen and I could see from his face how much he was hurting,” says Bailee.
“I rang Luis at work and told him to come home, saying ‘I think it might be time’.
“Soon the whole family were sat round Wyatt’s bedside.
“‘It’s OK if you want to go,’ I told him quietly. ‘We’ll be OK.’
“And just a few minutes later, he took his last breath. I just couldn’t believe that I’d lost my baby.
“I’ll never hear him say ‘I love you’ again, I realised. Luis, Isabella and I held each other and cried and cried.
“Then the hospice nurses took over. They washed Wyatt and put him in fresh clothes.
“We arranged a Spider-Man themed funeral for him, which I knew he’d have adored.
“The funeral home was packed. From his classmates to his paediatrician, everyone had loved him so much.”
Bailee says the days passed in a blur after Wyatt’s death on August 15, 2025.
“It took months to come to terms with the fact that my beautiful boy was no longer here,” she says.
“Now, we continue to miss Wyatt every second of every day. But we try to focus on the positives, and the magical memories we made with him.
“Whenever I feel really down, I picture Wyatt’s beaming face, posing with his favourite superheroes at Disneyland.
“Although I wish it had been under different circumstances, I’m so thankful my boy was able to see his dream come true.”
