September 9, 2015, was a day that started like any other. However, by the end of the day, we did not realize that our world would be forever changed. As we thought our son, Lucas was sick with just a common cold we learned that he had cancer. He was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoid Leukemia (ALL). From that moment on, things would never be the same. We were told that the first six to nine months of treatment would be our worst nightmare. Boy were the doctors right. Five months into Lucas’ treatment he took a turn for the worst. His counts dropped, he was diagnosed with Cdiff, had a very bad diaper rash and his liver started to fail. This led to Lucas being hospitalized for 30 days. He did a therapy of a “miracle drug” that was on trial and not yet approved for the United States. He had to have multiple blood and platelet transfusion and was on several medications in addition to his chemotherapy. Thankfully after these 30 torturous days, Lucas recovered. We were finally able to go home and Lucas was very excited, as he had not seen his sister in 30 days.
Lucas’ chemotherapy treatment was three years long. Through some minor bumps throughout the rest of his treatment, we finally made it to November 20, 2018. This was the end of Lucas’ chemotherapy. Since this was a big milestone, we wanted to celebrate not only Lucas surviving cancer but also how much of a warrior he was and the strength he showed throughout this whole journey. I decided to throw an end of chemotherapy celebration with our family.
After this celebration, I realized all the help that we received not only from our family but from other nonprofit organizations as well. This led to me wanting to be able to celebrate other children that are or were going through the same experiences as Lucas. I understand that not all kid’s journeys with cancer are the same. I do understand that each child deserves to be celebrated, therefore The Lumies Foundation was created. We want to ensure that all children are acknowledged for being a warrior and celebrate these children by ensuring that they can feel special for even a day!