Brendan Shanahan, is the old month old son of Chris and Melinda Shanahan. Chris is a fire fighter in Southborough, a paramedic in Worcester and a per diem firefighter and paramedic in Holden and his wife is an EMT that recently has put her career on hold to care for their little boy who was recently diagnosed with Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Lymphoblastic Leukemia, also know as “ALL”, also called lymphocytic or lymphoid, accounts for about 75 to 80 percent of the childhood leukemias. In this form of the disease, the lymphocyte cell line is affected. The lymphocytes normally fight infection. With acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the bone marrow makes too many of these lymphocytes and they do not mature correctly. The lymphocytes overproduce, thus, crowding out other blood cells. Immature blood cells (blasts) do not work properly to fight infection. Acute leukemia can occur over a short period of days to weeks. Chromosome abnormalities (extra chromosomes and structural changes in the chromosome material) are present in the majority of ALL patients. The prognosis is good for Brendan and his battle, but the road won't be an easy one. He is 2 months into his minimum of 3 1/2 years of treatment......and he and his family need our help!