Five parents share stories of their children's cancer diagnoses: neuroblastoma, leukemia, and others. They describe the shock, the financial strain, and how community support and the Mitchell Fund's assistance with travel and medical costs made survival possible. Mental health resources and celebrating milestones became sources of hope.
Jordan is 6 years old. It was just a regular day, out of the blue. And you're like, what in the world? Cancer? Neuroblastoma? I would have never thought that this would be my life. I just wanted to— I just wanted to wake up from a nightmare. You think about what would life be when he no longer has cancer. So you just try to focus on that. You don't think about how you got through it. You just think about your child and just keeping it together for them. Just gotta keep hope. Just gotta have hope. It's a journey.
It's a journey. It's always hard, but it's been almost 4 years since Carter has passed now. Either you isolate yourself from the world or you start to learn to live again. I think that's where we're at. You learn to live again.
The one thing I would say is you're going to have a community of people asking to help, asking in any way whatsoever. And your first initial reaction is, no, no, no, we're good, thank you, we've got this. My biggest suggestion is let them.
You can't do it all alone. There's no way. You need help, and it's okay. It's okay to ask for help. We had to go to Philly one time for Carter, so they helped us get a plane ticket to go, a hotel. So they helped us get there to see another doctor, and they made it all happen. So that's one less thing we had to worry about, is how are we going to afford to go.
When you're going through this, you don't know what you need. You don't. But when you have an organization that will tell you and help you and, and provide for you, that organization is extremely important.
We met Meg when we were in the hospital with Carter and she was with Mitchie.
I found out that my son had cancer when he was 3 months old. I would tell new parents that it's okay to be afraid. It's, it's normal to be afraid. It's normal to be angry, and it's very normal to feel alone. The more you can take care of yourself as the parent, The better you can be available to your child. The hospital offers so many different services to parents. If you need help with things outside the hospital, ask your nurses, ask the social worker, but if you don't ask, they cannot help you.
This is Zoe on her kindergarten graduation. Never knew if we'd make it there, but we did. And photos like this one give me strength a lot of times when I think I can't do something.
Zoe is 6 and a half right now, and she was diagnosed with previ-acute lymphoblastic leukemia at 4 and a half years old. It was definitely the worst day of my life. I think I fell to the floor, to be honest. I was in complete shock.
I can remember spiraling mentally, just completely spiraling, hearing the words from her. And immediately you want to scream, you want to cry. And I said, Zoe, honey, you have cancer. She looked up at me and she said, am I going to die, Daddy? Having that conversation was the most painful thing I have ever had to do in my life.
Our children see the counselor at the clinic, which I think has been really helpful. I started seeing a counselor. I could cry and vent and talk about my fears and talk about my feelings. It impacted my youngest daughter tremendously. She would ask, is Zoe gonna die?
I think the people here at Novant, Novant Hemmings, and St. Jude's are truly making an absolute difference. Personally, they were there for me, you know, I couldn't go to work for 4 weeks and never asked for anything in my life from anybody. And she said, Chris, we have a fund. You don't have to worry right now. Take this month. And I will never forget, they paid my rent and I cried like a baby. There is no shame in crying, and there is no shame in, in loving, and there is no shame in Shame in reaching out and asking about the things that you don't know about, because none of us know.
