09/05/2026
🎗️🎗️ Day 5 - Childhood Cancer Awareness month
November 24 2015. A day I don’t want to remember but a day I can’t forget. That’s when nori was diagnosed with stage 4 Neuroblastoma. The oncologists words were, “we are 99.9% positive it’s Neuroblastoma” but they wouldn’t know for sure until the biopsy came back. The biopsy which was scheduled for 8 days out. We were sent home that night. Our 2.5 year old was on round the clock oxycodone after barely ever (and rarely!) having anything stronger than Tylenol in her short life. A surgery was scheduled. A plan was in place. They felt they could remove the tumor growing off Nori’s adrenal gland and that would be it. 8 days is a lot of space for an aggressive cancer to grow. And grow it did. If I knew then what I know now, I never would’ve gone home that day.
November 29 2015. Nori’s Cancer metastasized and a tumor grew behind her left eye. Her eye was paralyzed by the tumor. Her eye was closed. Swollen. Red. She did not want anyone touching her face or head. Her pain was extreme. The oxy wasn’t touching her pain at all but she begged for medicine. Two and a half years old - begging for painkillers. A scan at 1am revealed the tumor behind her eye and chemo began later that day.
Now our 2.5 year old had stage 4 *metastatic* Neuroblastoma. We were numb. We didn’t know if she would regain her eyesight. We had no idea just how much our lives would change.
No parent should go through what Mike and I have gone through. We need more knowledge of how childhood cancers work so that it doesn’t have a chance to metastasize before diagnosis. How do we get that knowledge? More funding! More funding equals better understanding of how these cancers can be treated and a cure can be found. Two and a half year old babies should not know what pain medicine tastes like.
