When my 3-year-old daughter, Everly, was diagnosed with Pre-B Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, we were immediately life-flighted three hours away from our home to Montana Children’s Hospital (now Logan Health) in Kalispell, MT. During induction treatment for her leukemia (where serious chemotherapy is begun), Everly was re-hospitalized with severe sepsis, pneumonia, and adrenal insufficiency. While in-patient, she developed a rapidly worsening fungal leg infection from her immune-compromised state, and we were sent to Colorado Childrens in Denver. In December 2020, Everly battled typhlitis and kidney failure and we spent Christmas and New Years in an isolation unit in intensive care back in Kalispell. Even after almost three years of treatment, I still spend several days out of the month away from my other children and job as a Kindergarten teacher while she continues outpatient therapies and begins the process of rehabilitation and recovery.
If not for amazing foundations like the Montana Hope Project to give a light at the end of the tunnel, we truly would have had very little to look forward to during and after treatments ended.
It’s so easy to go through life with blinders on. And then your child gets cancer. And suddenly pediatric illnesses and disabilities don’t seem so rare or impossible anymore. Suddenly you’ve met so many families who have children with a variety of diseases and/or disabilities.
It is thanks to the Montana Hope Project that we, along with multiple other Montana families, were able to finally celebrate this past spring with a wish trip to Florida after the last 3 years of intense chemotherapy and its side effects. The kindness and generosity that this organization and its sponsors show for children with debilitating illnesses/disabilities and their families is unparalleled and has meant the world to me personally.
Thank you always!
-Jodi & Everly, and family
