It was the first weekend of October 2020, and Kira had returned from running a marathon with her best girlfriend outside of Salt Lake City. She noticed that the tissue in the corner of Eli’s eye was swollen without any obvious explanation. After a few days passed, she made a telehealth appointment with the pediatrician and Eli was prescribed a simple antibiotic. She half-jokingly said to the doctor, “this isn’t a brain tumor or anything, right?”

July marked the one-year anniversary of his diagnosis, and life hasn’t got any easier; each month brings new challenges. He stays in good spirits but relies on blood and platelet transfusions every couple of days. His care has been moved to Rochester, increasing the family’s travel expenses. This will hopefully have better and faster results with regards to getting a transplant.

For the first seven to 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. Sometimes they had to stay and other times they were back and forth in the same day. There was never any set schedule...

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.

Once she was done with treatment, Maiya’s appointments went on another 1 ½ years. The family was going back and forth sometimes several times a week, driving 45 mins to an hour each way. There were labs and physical therapy; it was one test after another. Life was still far from normal.

Kylie had Acute Myeloid Leukemia and started on five rounds of chemotherapy. For the first round, they spent about one month in the hospital. Then, they got to go home in between rounds of chemo forever watchful of Kylie’s immune system, which meant that she was susceptible to infection at any time.

Just four months after Allison’s diagnosis, Karen’s mom diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2019, and she passed away only one month later. She was living in California, so Karen so trying to travel back and forth from Chicago at the same time as Allison was sick and her husband was in El Salvador.

Seven months into this journey, her family has realized the huge positive impact and support offered by having a community that understands the difficult aspects of having a child with cancer, and her mom, Lynnie, has also begun to connect with groups outside of the hospital.

“You have no idea how much we appreciate your help, I have no words to express my gratitude. Especially now that we are moving hospitals and will be in Houston, eight hours away, paying our rent makes a huge difference. Thank you,” said Clarissa.