“I was shocked. I never thought it would have been me that could get something like cancer,” said John. “It was hard and annoying, but it gave me a new sense of purpose."

“Life was pretty disrupted,” said Shondra. “I would just take off days for her treatment, but I got to keep my job. I tried hard to be an invaluable employee, so I worked longer days to compensate for days I had out.”

“We were taking a lot of extra precautions and trying to keep the girls’ spirits up. We could only see family standing in the yard and talking. We were grateful for Facetime and for the support of our community. We had become part of a cancer community that we didn’t want to belong to.”

“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?”