In April 2019, our sweet 2 1/2-year-old baby was life-flighted to Children’s Hospital Colorado after finding a large football-sized mass constricting his bladder, bowels, and prostate. He was in kidney failure as a result.
When we got to Denver, we were told that mass was a very rare form of pediatric cancer and that there are only 10 specialists in the world who study and treat it. This cancer is Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. At this time, he was started on the first of 48 weekly rounds of inpatient intensive chemotherapy. This protocol is usually administered in adults who generally receive under 20 rounds of this same chemotherapy. It has remained the same devastating protocol for nearly 40 years.
We continued to travel 12 hours every 6 weeks or so back and forth from MT, where we lived, to Denver, where he received scans and continued monitoring for metastases.
In August of 2019, we returned to Denver to embark on a 5 1/2 week stay where our baby was sedated daily (Mon-Fri) for radiation to his tumor.
In February 2020, though he had finished his treatment, he did not get to ring the bell signifying him being cancer-free. Instead, we received word his cancer had spread to his lungs, and we would be losing him.
This is just a very small glimpse into the pain and suffering we were enduring together as a family. Learning that our baby, who did not understand but was fighting so hard and dreamed of someday going to school like his brothers to learn to read, would not be possible was excruciating.
As devastating as this was, Squish was granted an emergency Make-A-Wish from the South Dakota and Montana chapter.
We had a decision to make.
How can you help a three-year-old identify a wish when he couldn’t even fathom the concept of this level of dreaming?
He had only known our little world, and when Katie, his wish granter, asked about his dream, he couldn’t imagine anything other than meeting a real-life dinosaur.
Katie helped our baby identify a dream, that we could have never imagined would impact our lives in such a devastating time for the better. Squish and “his boys” beamed excitedly over what she offered them. A real chance to meet a live dinosaur!
A Make-A-Wish trip to Universal Studios in Florida to meet Jurassic Park’s Blue, lunch at the T-Rex Cafe, where he would be able to make his very own Dino build a bear! Make A Wish SD & MT also included wishes for our boys- we were also gifted with 3 days of Disney World, front-of-the-line passes, a trip to SeaWorld to meet a whale, and the opportunity to watch “real knights” joust their way through our supper.
Just days after learning our baby would not survive this battle, we embarked on the most magical experience we could ever have imagined. Taking our boys (Cohen was 7, Kye was 5, and Squish was 3) along with our biggest support team of loved ones.
Make A Wish gave us a gift worth more than any amount of money in the world. We were given hope, joy, and relief from our nightmare and an opportunity to dream and play with our boys. Instead of talking about treatments, scans, blood transfusions, cell counts, and combating side effects, we were practicing our best Mickey and goofy voices and making T-shirts so we could also be one of those “cute matching families.” For in this time our priorities shifted to seeking joy.
Make A Wish coordinated everything for us. All expenses were paid, and we were even very generously and lovingly welcomed to Give Kids the World, a medically safe, magical resort where kids get to eat ice cream for breakfast!
We were treated like royalty. The boys were loved on and encouraged by perfect strangers with more love and generosity in their hearts than we had ever known. We got to stay at the most incredible, magical, medically safe resort—Give Kids the World, which is almost entirely run on volunteer power. They also have the MOST incredible putt-putt course, completely dinosaur-themed. At every turn, our boy was experiencing his wish.
Our boys ate ice cream for breakfast every day we were there. For snacks, we took pizza to the parks, and we regularly had special visits from amazing volunteers who ran a cookie cart. When Squish was too sick one morning to join the party at breakfast, Disney Stars Mickey and Goofy came to our little “home” and gave us our very own private meet-and-greet.
We were one of the last families to receive a wish trip for many years, as COVID-19 was working its way around shutting down the world and robbing people of connection and joy.
Hundreds of families and children were denied any travel wishes, and sadly, many children passed away before ever receiving their wishes. Seeing this devastation firsthand has created an invaluable level of thankfulness in our family that can’t be taught or experienced.
This trip rejuvenated and energized our family so we could return home and engage in the hardest war we had ever known. Our silly boy and our family continued to fight his cancer until October 2020, just 4 days shy of turning 4.
Approximately a year after we lost our precious son, we were told by a research team that, unfortunately, there will never be enough funds available to study this specific subtype of pediatric cancers as there are others out there with a more curable opportunity.
We are desperately working to keep our beautiful son’s memory alive and honor those who loved him and us the most.
Our goal is to raise $1,000 by THIS Friday. We know there are so many more kind and generous humans out there, who also want to support families during this time.
Please share Caiden’s story. Say his name and donate if you can because, without donations, none of this would be possible. Without donations, Caiden wouldn’t have met Blue. Cohen and Kye wouldn’t have danced in the street with Mickey, and the rest of us “Bigs” would not have experienced the pure joy that exuded from our three boys.
Donations are urgently needed as without them, children pass away without having an opportunity to see their wishes granted.
We saw this firsthand as we were one of the last families to receive a wish trip for over two years.
Make A Wish will forever mean more to us than almost any other organization as they did EVERYTHING for our 3 little boys that we could ever imagine giving them hope and strength for what came October 20, 2020, just 4 days after Squish’s 4th birthday.
Please donate even if all you can give is your Monday morning Starbucks order amount.
Every bit of generosity, however big, equates to granting these precious children and their families an opportunity for joy and reprieve during this devastating time.
Now for the numbers:
A $20 donation could equal pizza for a week for a family just like ours!
A $100 donation could cover 1 week’s worth of ice cream for breakfast (or anytime) for a family.
$500 donations could cover all 175 families’ ice cream for a day.
An average wish trip to Disney World costs approximately $6500-$7500- in addition to all of the volunteer power and corporate gifts.
