RACINE — Caleb Steffen is just 8 years old, but he has worn many hats.

Among his favorites were his Scooby-Doo and a dark blue Marquette University baseball caps which fit over any color and number of bandanas to cover his once bald head.

Caleb, a survivor of acute lymphocytic leukemia, a cancer of the blood that affect mostly boys ages 4 to 10, no longer needs to don so many head covers. But he does know he plays a role in helping people, especially kids, understand cancer and what it was like for him to go through the treatment that helped him survive.

This year, on July 30, he celebrated two years since taking his last dose of chemotherapy drugs and the disease is in remission. Friday he will share duties at Kenosha’s Relay for Life as a co-chairman for the annual event along with Pleasant Prairie’s Jean Werbie.

Caleb was just 4 years old and in pre-school when doctors found a large mediastinal mass in his chest. The discovery was made as his parents Nancy and Brian sought medical attention for their son’s bad cough that wouldn’t go away. The mass and the excessive lymphatic cells, or white blood cells, caused him difficulty breathing, according to Nancy.

The cancer was also affecting his heart. Caleb was immediately rushed from his local doctor to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee where further diagnosis confirmed his leukemia.

“I had a bad cough,” said Caleb calmly while surrounded by his mom, dad and little sister Audrey. “I had too many white blood cells.”

In fact, Caleb had a white blood cell count of 450,000, or more than five times the normal blood cell count for a boy his age. Normal range is 8,000 to 10,000 cells.The first night doctors did not give him chemotherapy drugs as his vital signs were too unstable and they were worried his heart would fail, said Brian.

A regimen of steroids were used to bring down the swelling. Later, Caleb under went chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

At The Prairie School, where Caleb will be entering the third grade and Brian is the dean of students, his teachers prepared his classmates for when Caleb would return. There were days when he was just too tired to sit in a classroom, but when he was present, most of his classmates knew that Caleb had been sick and that he was taking medicine that was working to destroy the cancerous cells. Caleb was actually part of a clinical trial of The Children’s Oncology group, a trial supported by the National Cancer Institute.

The drugs given him were only issued numbers. And unlike skin tissue cancers, cancers involving body fluids, such as blood, are not staged for terminal severity. ALL or acute lymphocytic leukemia

“I told the whole school (about ALL). That cancer could kill you and that I was tired all the time,” said Caleb, who learned to talk freely about his cancer. “It wasn’t really that fun.”

His parents are cautious, yet optimistic as they look to the future. Nancy, a facility systems specialist for the Blood Center of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, said the family takes life one step at a time knowing that each year Caleb has a clean bill of health is reassuring.

“They say that if you can stay cancer free five years, they consider that to be cured,” Nancy said.