Since early October, Ray and Stephanie Glynn of Nocatee have slept on the floor of a cramped room at Baptist Hospital.
Their son, Ryan, lies in bed elevated above them.
After the day’s final professions of love, they look up from their air mattresses and wait for his playful bedtime chatter to trail off into silence.
Once the 4-year-old’s eyes shut, Ray and Stephanie do their best to calm their thudding hearts, get a few hours of rest, and gird for another day.
Ryan has leukemia.
“How does this happen to a little kid like this?” Ryan’s grandfather, Joseph Tusso, told The Citizen from his bedside. “You’re just stunned when you hear it. Stunned.”
The diagnosis emerged after Ryan mild but recurring sicknesses over several months. Finally, a doctor suggested a visit to the emergency room for more rigorous testing.
The Glynns were told that Ryan had cancer. The words tore through their world like a Category-5 hurricane, shearing off the limitless optimism that once defined the young couple’s future.
“But then you have to regroup,” said Tusso, who moved to Florida from Patchogue on Long Island in 2018. “Now what? What do we have to do?”
Their little soldier, the family resolved, would never march alone from that point forward.
Working in shifts, Ryan’s parents and both sets of grandparents stay by his bedside around the clock.
“There is always someone to lean on,” Joe said. “There are good days and there are bad days, but there is always someone to lean on.”
While the parental heart stops with a leukemia diagnosis, the bills don’t. Raymond and Stephanie were suddenly in a position where they had to choose between flanking Ryan’s bedside and staying solvent.
Mercifully, Ray happened to work at the hospital where Ryan is being treated, and has continued to labor as much as he can while still seeing his son.
Stephanie has had to take a leave of absence.
“There have been many generous friends and local charities, but as you can imagine, it is a Herculean task,” the family said in a statement for a Gofundme campaign that has raised $30,000 so far. “Medical bills and daily living expenses do not stop just because your child is struck with a terrible disease.”
Support has poured in from the Glynn’s former home on Long Island to Florida.
Joe Tusso and his wife lived in The Villages when the diagnosis came down, but have since sold their home and moved closer to Nocatee to enlist in Ryan’s battle and ease as much of the burden as they can.
After three grueling rounds of chemotherapy, will look for a bone marrow donor for a transplant. Ryan’s 2-year-old sister, Kenzie, could be a candidate.
A superhero enthusiast with a speciality in ninjas, Ryan has made several friends on the floor of his hospital, populated by other children facing down the unthinkable.
Naturally, he has asked why he suddenly spends so much time away from his own bedroom these days.
“We just tell him that he’s sick,” his grandfather said. “We tell him that he’s sick, and that we’re going to help him get better. So he can go home.”
