Our family was gearing up for the holiday season. We were in the hustle and bustle of buying gifts, planning Christmas dinner, and making sure our Christmas was extra special for our children Emmett and Evelyn. Emmett was 8 years old and had been complaining of leg pain since the end of the football season. Emmett was a quarterback and often got tackled. During his last game I noticed three boys fell on his left leg. That was the same leg that he told me continued to hurt. After taking him to the pediatrician, she chalked it up to growing pains or an old football injury that wasn’t healing. When it didn’t get better, we went to the orthopedic express care, and they did an x-ray. They said he had the best bones that the doctor had ever seen, and it was growing pains. Our whole family ended up getting pneumonia and we really struggled with it, it was bad! During that season there was also the flu going around that was causing people horrible leg pains. When Emmett’s leg pain continued into December, we got concerned. The week he got diagnosed, I started to notice weird bruising on his body, he appeared pale, and he was always cold. This led me to the local express care demanding bloodwork. I got the call later that night, on December 19th, to go straight to Hershey Hospital. Emmett was diagnosed with B-cell leukemia, and a few days later, bloodwork came back that it was a rare form.
Hershey hospital is different, and I can tell you that as a healthcare worker myself. We felt like family immediately, and everyone went above and beyond for us! It was a place no family wants to be at any time, but especially Christmas. They still found many ways to make it so special for our family. My son actually commented that it was still his favorite Christmas. All my “perfect” ideas of Christmas went out the door, and all that mattered was that we were all together.
When Emmett was first diagnosed, we met our social worker, who is amazing, and she informed us we were now a Four Diamonds family. I had never heard of this before, but I had heard of THON. I went into it not knowing how special this program actually is. When your child is first diagnosed, you know you are going to have to be off work for an extended period of time and the thought of balancing all of this plus medical bills and regular bills back home is exhausting. I was so grateful to hear that any medical bill that wasn’t covered by our insurance would be covered by Four Diamonds. Four Diamonds has done many events for our family, and we are creating special bonds with students at Penn State through THON. Meeting other pediatric cancer families at these events is so special. To be able to relate to someone who knows exactly what you are going through is truly a blessing. It has been one of the biggest blessings in our life and we will forever be thankful for everything you guys do!
Emmett went onto a clinical trial at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with a therapy called CAR-T therapy. This trial is for his specific type of leukemia, using CAR-T early on in treatment. CAR-T therapy is very unique; they train his T-cells in a lab to kill of his B-cells since he has B-cell leukemia. We are 5 months out from his treatment, and he has not had a B-cell return. He continues to go to Hershey every month for bloodwork and CHOP every third month for a bone marrow biopsy. CHOP was also a great hospital, but we found ourselves missing our Hershey family and communicated with them often while Emmett spent 6 weeks in Philadelphia for treatment.
KEEP DANCING until there is a cure for every child!
To ensure that THON is able to donate 96 cents of every dollar raised to Four Diamonds at Penn State Health Children’s Hospital, we heavily rely on donor support. These donations provide us the resources to create endless memories for our Four Diamonds families & foster a deep love & connection to our mission for our volunteers through Pre-THON Events, alternative fundraisers, & THON Weekend.
