“It’s hard when you have other kids, Ophelia and her treatment became the center of our lives. It was also tough helping the boys to understand, cancer is a scary big word. All the kids needed a lot of support.”

At 14 months old, little Isaac had his long open-heart surgery at Children’s Minnesota. A few days later, his team noticed that his platelets were low, one of the first indicators of cancer. Isaac also had red dots appear on his body; a sign that his blood wasn’t clotting. Isaac had a bone marrow biopsy, and a couple of weeks later Amanda and Derek received the news that Isaac had MDS: pre-cancer.

“Pinky Swear sent us an Orange Envelope, it felt good that there are Foundations out there willing to help families and to get support from people who don’t even know us. We felt very happy and thankful to get the support to get our mortgage paid and not worry about that for at least that month. We appreciate the hard work Pinky swear puts to help families and letting them know they are not alone! Thank you so much for all the love and support, it brings happiness to the families when we need it the most.”

“Brandi was caring for Reese, so I reached out to organizations that may help. What Pinky Swear did for our family was incredibly helpful. Food and gas were our top priorities during treatment.”  

"With incredible kindness Pinky Swear responded with a generous donation that helped to keep our home and prevented us from incurring additional debt. We felt such immense relief, it was like coming up for air after being knocked down by a wave in the ocean. We will never be able to completely repay the kindness that has been shown to our family by Pinky Swear, but from the bottoms of our hearts, we thank you and vow to pay it forward forever.” 

It was October 2020, and Kira noticed that the corner of Eli’s eye was swollen. Eli was prescribed an antibiotic. She half-jokingly said, “This isn’t a brain tumor or anything, right?”

“Us cancer moms, we lose everybody but we need support. People don’t understand because he looks so good, I think, it doesn’t matter how he looks, he is going to die unless he gets the treatment he needs.”

For the first seven or eight months, Terrance and Terrayah were back and forth to the hospital almost every day. There were constant tests and procedures, and sadly the tumor was growing fast. There was never any set schedule, but a 20-minute drive each way clocked the miles up on Terrance’s car, and there were frequent visits to the gas station.

Then, late in 2020, Robert’s doctors decided to give him a chemo treatment meant for adults. He was the first child in the USA to take this medicine and, to his family’s amazement, he did a complete 360. He improved in three days, was out of the ICU, and his host versus graft disease was gone.