Faith's Second Battle With Cancer
Faith's Story:
On December 24, 2011, Faith (then 6 years old) was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on her spine. She then had surgery to removed the tumor and place a port (a special kind of IV site under her skin to give her chemo without having to start IVs all the time). She spent approximately 10 months in and out of St Johns Children's Hospital in Springfield IL for chemotherapy and radiation.
On her final day of treatment, Faith left the hospital in true Faith fashion - in a fancy limo rocking out to some Justin Bieber the whole way home. She got to drive by all of the local schools and thank everyone for their endless support and prayers. Faith went for scans every three months to make sure that nasty cancer stayed away. Each scan that came back was another 3 months to add to the "cancer free days." That was, until February 28th, 2014 when their family got the devastating news that Faith would be battling cancer yet again just 15 short months later.
For a few weeks prior to this, Faith was feeling a little under the weather and after a questionable looking chest x-ray her oncologist in Springfield wanted to see her. He drew some blood work and examined Faith and found that Faith would now be battling leukemia this time. (Clearly this cancer thing isn't getting the memo with this girl...she's good at kicking it's booty)
After a very critical touch and go hospital stay for most of March of 2014, Faith miraculously achieved remission from her leukemia. Unfortunately, this was wasn't enough to complete this battle for her. Her doctors firmly believed that a bone marrow transplant was necessary to maintain her cancer free state. So in July of 2014, Faith received a bone marrow transplant via an anonymous 18 year old donor from the bone marrow registry, who she hopes to one day meet and thank. She spent 100 days in isolation after the transplant and since has battled some nasty side effects of her bone marrow transplant - including graft vs host disease on 2 different occasions, pneumonia, and most recently a lengthy hospitalization where she spent weeks in multi-system organ failure and was fighting for her life. She still remains hospitalized, but appears to be slowly on the mend. Her mother, Stacy, has never left her side through all of this and consequently is unable to work, but still has a family at home to provide for as Faith is one of 6 children.
We set up this fundraiser in hopes to raise some money for the family to alleviate some of the stresses that have come from this situation. Financial burden does not need to be one of them.
Throughout this process, Faith has kept a smile and really shown us all what strength and "faith" is.
**If you are crossing by this page and haven't heard of Faith, I encourage you to go her "Keeping The Faith" facebook page to keep up with the updates.
https://m.facebook.com/KeepingtheFaith2014
**ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO DIRECTLY TO FAITH'S MOTHER**
Thank you. God Bless.
