On Tuesday, December 12th, Chase turns 14! Isn’t that a miracle?!
This year, he (again) had a request: his birthday fundraiser be equally divided between Lurie Children’s Hospital and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. But there’s also a little extra, a special 14th birthday nod to his friend Robbie Gould’s new partnership with Cal’s Angels. In honor of Chase, we will also be raising a separate $500 going to Cal’s Angels in order to help grant a wish for another child like Chase.
We can’t think of a more fitting plan! Lurie has gifted Chase life more times than we can count, the Rizzo Foundation has instilled more hope, and Cal’s has brought more joy – Life, Hope, and Joy – all together.
Would you consider donating here? You can give $14 for Chase’s 14 years (or a multiple of 14…or more!).
Every dollar counts, and this year, it feels like it counts double…no, triple! …as the dollars will go to help a child like Chase and a family like ours – often in their most stressful, heartbreaking moments – in the home with Cal’s, in the hospital with Lurie, and around the country with The Rizzo Foundation.
With your help, we can contribute to research, resources, and encouragement for so many children like Chase.
Dear ones, as Chase lay asleep last night, just short of the ten o’clock hour, we quietly crossed over the $10,000 mark. In less than 24 hours, no, in barely half that time, the Chase Away Cancer community and friends gathered OVER $10,000 for Lurie Children’s Hospital and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation in honor of Chase’s 13 years!
Did you hear that? Did you read it, because I want to say it again… in 2022, with inflation and illness and sadness all around us, you quietly and efficiently added thirteen to thirteen to thirteen over and over again until it was thousands and thousands!
He came to find me at my computer right before his dad tucked him in and wrapped in his gingerbread man pajamas, he leaned over the screen. “How did we do?”
“They did it, Chase. For you… Ten thousand dollars…”
And last year, he gasped and jumped up and down, but this year, his eyes got wide, a smile appeared on the edge of his lips, and then he bent his head to my shoulder with a long sigh of relief and a single word.
“Good.”
And isn’t that just the heart of it sometimes? We put our heads down, rest from the fight, take a deep breath, and sit with the good – even if only for a moment – because there is always good to be had, especially now, in the Advent of the Best.
And dear ones… this was a VERY GOOD THING that happened this Monday, the 12th of December. We rested for a moment and we hope and pray that these beautiful, amazing donations help others rest longer and easier farther along.
Looking forward with great hope, from the bottom of our hearts –
ANNOUNCING…. “12 FOR 12” …!! [Chase’s birthday fundraiser]
Can you believe it? By all rights and data, our precious Chase should have never seen a 3rd year, let alone a 12th birthday! Yet, here we are and Chase still lives and breathes joy into our family and the world around him. And on December 12th – 12/12 – he will officially be 12. A golden birthday for a golden boy. He is a miracle and we are so thankful.
This year, Chase had a very special request for his birthday fundraiser (which is running an extra day – so the whole weekend!). He wanted the money equally divided between Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation – two of his absolute favorites.
We can’t think of a more fitting plan! Lurie has brought Chase life more times than we can count, and the Rizzo Foundation has instilled so much hope – and Hope and Life go hand in hand in so many precious ways.
So after much discussion with our Lurie and Rizzo families, THIS PAGE was put together. All the funds will rest there, so we can see a grand total, and then when all is said and done, the Rizzo Family will write a check for half of the total, on Chase’s behalf, to Lurie Children’s – because of YOU, dear ones!
Would you consider making a donation? You can give $12 (or a multiple of 12…or more!) in honor of Chase’s 12 years. Every dollar counts – and it feels like it counts double this year – as the dollars will go to help a child like Chase and a family like ours – often in their most stressful, heartbreaking moments – both in the hospital with Lurie and around the country with ARFF.
With your help, we can contribute to research, resources and encouragement for so many children like Chase.
On behalf of the fighters and families supported by Lurie Children’s Hospital and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation…
THANK YOU.
**PLEASE feel FREE to share the fundraiser link far and wide!!**
There are rare and wonderful species of joy that flourish only in the rainy atmosphere of suffering.
John Piper
This year, he doubled his digits, and he doubled his diagnoses too.
With his own eyes, he witnessed the celebration of the Super Bowl in Atlanta.
With his own words, he told his story to the Vice President of the United States in Washington.
With his own body, he’s gone swimming and running and laughed and played.
And with that same body, he’s wept and known fear and exhaustion and pain.
He’s had 1 surgery, 2 full body scans and biopsies, and 3 ultrasounds in the pursuit of this, the second cancer. Which means that he’s been under anesthesia close to 10 times this year.
He’s had 1 round of treatment, 2 documented instances of spread/relapse, and what feel like limitless amounts of blood drawn from his body.
He walked back into the world of seizures – for the first time in 7 years – and had to face down the fear of a potential brain cancer relapse.
He’s had MRIs, CTs, and X-Rays to spare.
And if I counted off the days out of the last 365 that he spent in the hospital, they number about 60. …that’s more than once a week.
Those are the days alone. But if I counted the actual appointments, the number would close to triple.
It’s been one of the most extraordinary years of his short life, and so it’s perfectly fitting and perfectly amazing that your response to his year and life was equally extraordinary.
Dear ones, in your celebration of Chase, you raised almost $5,000* in a single day!
You are incredible.
And I love that – because of your many, sacrificial, encouraging, ‘happy birthday’ gifts to the Rizzo Foundation on behalf of Chase – more help will walk the halls of the hospital, more tears will be dried, more smiles will be felt, and more end-of-their-rope parents will be granted more rope and easier breathing in the worst seasons of life.
This is all you, dear ones, and we are so proud of and thankful for your extraordinary response to our extraordinary Chase.
Thank you for faithfully, joyfully, compassionately walking this journey with us…
Moment by moment.
**If you haven’t had a chance to give yet, you’re not too late! Simply click HERE to donate now!**
At almost twenty four hours past ten exact (and so long) weeks, there is news.
Chase is going to be having a full body scan.
They used to say that absolutely anybody who got thyroid sick like this had to have their full body looked at, but in the last few years, the doctors realized that there are some who need this level and others who really do not.
And herein lies the conundrum that has lasted much of these weeks set aside for his post-surgery healing: Chase’s cancer lies low and quiet in the area where thyroid sick people really do not need a full body scan, but Chase himself stands tall and proud at the other end of the spectrum. If we were being honest, I always picture Chase holding the “high risk” sign marching at the head of the “high risk” parade, leading everyone who follows him into even greater unknown areas.
So these last weeks, the ones who oversee his care here in Chicago have talked to different endocrine teams across the country asking; “Hi there, what would you do with a child like Chase?”(as we all do at one point or another…) And some have thought to stick to the guidelines of thyroid ultrasounds now and again, while others have said they would scan the whole body just to be safer than safe. And ultimately, there was no right or wrong path, just whatever is best for Chase. But what is best for Chase?
Outside on Easter Sunday
And so it came down to last night. And I thought I had the peace to hear whatever I was going to hear on the phone. I even thought I had the words I’d need to either accept or advocate…
In these weeks, I have prayed for wisdom and strength and told all the doctors that I feel unfit for this decision. Do you have any idea how beguiling the idea of a full body scan is to the average cancer parent who beats back founded and unfounded fear with every blink of their eyes? I am not equal to these challenges because the logical part of my brain parses clinical data even as my mother’s heart screams to GIVE HIM ALL THE TESTS NOW.
And then it came. The call last night… “I talked to Chase’s oncology team, and they feel that, given his complicated history, it would be far better to just go ahead and do the full body scan.”
And I knew such peace in that minute. Because each moment of care is ultimately about Chase being understood. And in that phone consult moment, he was known. At this time, it’s not necessarily the known cancer that is the enemy, but the cell secrets his body likes to keep quiet until they challenge him (and us) hard and fast. And now all the teams are on board around this idea: we are ready to be done with cell secrets for a while.
Doing labs in his Washington DC shirt
But there is a reason they hesitated to do this for him and it’s because the process is long and complicated. In order to ready his body for its close up, he will need to be taken off the medicine that keeps him thyroid-functional even though he lacks the actual organ, and he will feel, as they said yesterday, “not himself”. He will sicken and tire and just hurt for the medication we are keeping from his little body. The medication that just, in the last two weeks, has finally regulated and helped him to feel better. And it will take two full weeks to get him to this tired point. And then there will be successive lab days and they will marry with test days, and so the entire process, start to finish, will probably last two to three weeks.
But we will know. (at least all there is to know in this moment)
Making a new friend in the hospital; Chicago Cubs first baseman, and amazing encourager, Anthony Rizzo
So, I exhale in relief, and Chase, well, he inhales in apprehension. Because in his precious mind, to look at the body is to find cancer. Every time there’s a new test these days, they find another mutant cell.
“What it…?” he says.
“We will deal and it will be okay.” I try to keep my voice even for him.
“But Mom, what if they find a new cancer and there isn’t a pill to take it away?” His nearly lash-less brown eyes are huge and his mouth twists around his emotions as he sits on the stairs and voices these too-big questions.
And God help me, I looked into his eyes and I broke and lied. Because there are certain things we don’t ever want to have to tell our children. “There will always be a pill.” Oh God, please don’t ask me to ever go back on my word to him…please.
But he knows me and he knows enough. “But what if there isn’t…?”
“We will always do as much as we can, my sweet boy,” I reach for him. “I don’t want you to worry for these things if it isn’t time to worry, okay?”
He nods. “Okay. Just tell me this. When I stop breathing here, will I start breathing with in heaven with Jesus and Mia?”
I swear that I stop breathing for him. How are these things even in his heart? “Faster than you can breathe, my love. Faster even than you can think.”
“Okay.” He nods as the fear fades off his face. In this moment, he is not afraid to die, as he sometimes is when he thinks about hospital things. Today he was just afraid to be alone and I could tuck that fear away for him, for a moment if nothing else.
“Tell me this,” I force a smile as I feed him the line I always do when he sits in the fear too long. “Are you planning on dying any time soon?”
He grins and jumps up. “No! I’m going to ride my bike, okay?” He pauses and switches to his most authoritative tone, “And hey, you need to tell my doctor that when they finally get this cancer out of me, I need to start my growth hormones again because everybody is taller than me.”
I smile back at him, thankful he is diverted for the now. “Do I look like your butler?”
“Yes!” He giggles and then is out the door and into the sunshine.
Chase (as “Walter Payton” with a Robbie Gould jersey) signs an autograph for Grandpa Poole after his school ‘Famous Americans’ presentation last week
One minute is the agony of decisions.
One minute holds the beating back of brutal questions that have no good place in the head of a small child.
And one minute, we are riding bikes and being sassy in the sun.
This is life with Chase.
Moment by moment.
“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” 1 Corinthians 13:12-13
