It Wasn't By Choice
Twenty-three years ago, our 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. The doctors told my wife and me our daughter had a 45% chance of survival. Seven months later, when she relapsed, that all changed. The doctors informed us she wasn’t going to make it. But we were convinced there was someone out there who could save her. I started reading medical literature and attending medical conferences throughout the United States; we went to see top pediatric cancer experts at centers throughout the country, and we found them.
Since then, she has relapsed six more times, has had over 350 weeks of chemotherapy (mild and heavy), seven major surgeries, countless weeks of radiation therapy, and two years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy surgery (a result of the radiation she received while fighting childhood cancer), she is still on mild treatment (ALK inhibitor), married and doing fine.
While her battle has been brutal, she is one of the lucky ones. At the beginning of our daughter’s journey, we became friends with eight other families also having a child fighting the same cancer. While our daughter was relapsing, these children were dying. When her last friend died, we decided to start End Kids Cancer.
Help Is On The Way
In communities across our country, many children have a deadly childhood cancer called neuroblastoma (NB). It is the most common solid tumor among infants and a cancer affecting the nerve cells outside the brain.
These children are fighting for their lives—fewer than half will survive. When a child relapses, the survival rate drops into the single digits, and that is true when children are properly diagnosed. Unfortunately, up to a third aren't, causing them to be given the wrong treatments and worse. These children are our focus.
Treatments for these children involve surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, tandem bone marrow transplants, and antibodies. Chemotherapy and radiation are themselves carcinogenic. If the child is fortunate enough to survive, the likelihood of dealing with long-term side effects is 72%, with 42% being life-threatening.
That is why harnessing the child’s own immune system is so important. Every one of the doctors on our medical advisory board is focused on training the immune system to fight cancer without toxic lifelong or life-threatening side effects. Obviously, our first priority is to fund any treatment that can significantly increase survival rates; however, all things being equal, we at End Kids Cancer will lean towards harnessing the child's own immune system - like how a vaccine works.
Help Is On The Way!