Every cancer survivor learns lessons that can't be taught in a class or from a book. Their wisdom is earned through facing uncertainty, finding courage in difficult times, and walking a path few understand on their journey to survivorship.

Each survivor’s story reminds us why cancer research matters.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, a time to recognize the children and families affected by childhood cancers and to emphasize the importance of supporting research. This September, we're honored to share Keira’s story, told by her mother, Christine.

Keira was 20 months old in May 2012 when we went to her pediatrician for a very high fever. He said it was probably “just a virus” and sent us on our way.

Three days later, the fever was still there. We went to a local urgent care, where they said it was probably “just a virus” and sent us on our way.

Three days later, the fever was still there. We went to the emergency room, where they told us it was probably “just a virus” and sent us home.

We returned to the pediatrician, who said the only thing they could think of was to draw blood, which somehow, no had thought of until this point!!! They could hardly tap her vein but managed to get a sample. We sat in the waiting room until the pediatrician came back out to say he thought she had leukemia, and we had to head to Orlando right away.

The Air Force had just moved us from Virginia to Florida, so none of our support system lived in the state. We left our three-year-old with a spouse from my husband’s new squadron.

We drove to Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital, where Keira was quickly diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. They said she would have died within days if we had just listened to all of the “just a virus” nonsense.

Our care was overseen by doctors from the Nemours Clinic, and we moved over to their new hospital when it opened in October of 2012. Keira was in remission after the first few treatments, and she continued to receive chemotherapy for the next 2.5 years. She received chemo orally, intravenously, and intrathecally (directly into her spine). Every night we had to put on gloves to protect ourselves from the chemicals in the chemo pills we had to feed to our baby in apple sauce, because babies don’t know how to swallow pills on their own.

Things I remember most are Keira just being Keira. She didn’t know that this was abnormal. That her childhood was being stripped from her, as she became friends with doctors and nurses and played with toys from the childlife specialists.

I asked her what she remembers: She loved the way that she could control the color of the ceiling lights in her hospital room (pink!) She loved the hospital breakfasts. She remembers all the fun things she got to do through organizations like Scott Hamilton CARES: Runway to Hope in Orlando (walking the runway with Tinkerbell), Candlelighters of Brevard County (county events and monetary help for children with cancer), Make A Wish (Disney cruise where she met all the characters and got a limo ride to the cruise terminal), LLS now Blood Cancer United (she loved the Light the Night walks around Lake Eola in Orlando), and of course Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer® at the Kia Center!

For my husband and me, we remember feeling safe in the hospital. If something were to go wrong, we were already in the right place. We remember looking out the window and wondering how life kept going on while we were going through this nightmare. We remember there were two other kids named Keira (Kiara and Kiera) on the cancer floor. We remember commiserating with other parents on the floor. We remember that some of them didn’t get to take their kids home, ever. We remember how our baby who had long hair at 20 months old lost it all, until the patchiness was too much, so she and my husband shaved their heads together. We remember how I couldn’t travel to New Jersey as my husband’s father died because Keira’s “numbers” were too low to be exposed to airplane germs.

You know how you have those life defining moments that give you a before and after? The military moved us around a lot, so our life has always been defined by that timeline. “When we lived in Los Angeles,” or Albuquerque, or “first” Virginia, or “second” Virginia, etc… Then in 2008, our son died at birth. That was our first before and after. Before we lost Daniel, after we lost Daniel. We thought that was our one defining moment. And then in 2012, Keira got cancer. Now we have the before Keira had cancer and the after Keira had cancer. But you can’t imagine how scared we were to think we would lose our baby again.

Thanks to science, medication, doctors, nurses, and organizations like yours, we continue to live in the “after Keira had cancer” moment. Keira has grown up. In fact, yesterday was her 16th birthday and her Sweet 16! She had a lovely party, and she is getting her drivers license in a couple of weeks.

We would like people to know that:

Hearing your child has cancer is earth-shattering. Life will never be the same. Every fever, every sickness, will scare you forever. But you get used to the after, the new normal.
Science has taken childhood cancer survival rates from below 10% to almost 90%. 50 years ago, this was a death sentence. Thanks to funding for research, it is not. But 90% survival means that 1 in 10 kids still don’t get to leave the hospital. “Thoughts and prayers” DID NOT save my child’s life. Funding and science DID!
There is so much light at the end of the tunnel.
This is crazy, but some of our fondest memories are those we made during treatment. Like it or not, cancer was a member of the family and is incorporated into our memories.

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