Gift Stories

Four-year-old Grant is what you call a real trooper! For almost two years, he’s been poked and prodded by more doctors and nurses than his parents care to count. He’s been battling neuroblastoma ever since a softball-size tumor was found on his adrenal gland back in June 2014. Team Summer kid Aliyah met Grant in the…

Remember this face?? It’s Maylee! Team Summer kid Alyssa made her a rabbit at Alyssa’s Team Summer Build-a-Bear party! And guess what? Maylee had already been selected by another Team Summer kid to get a Team Summer gift, and this is the story about that gift! Maylee is only four years old, but she’s already…

Eleven-year-old Alyssa is one of those kids who just sparkles! She has had a positive attitude and big heart for as long as her family can remember. And she was always really healthy…until last September when she started having some weird symptoms…like a backache and nausea. Doctors thought it was just a bad virus. But by…

Seven-year-old Chandler is a sports guy. From a young age, he took to football and baseball like a champ. His coaches said he showed great promise. But all that changed last February. Chandler started getting tired. Really tired. He’d come home from school and fall asleep on the couch. And his leg hurt. Then some odd…

2015 was a year of shocking news for 15-year-old Aliyah. First, the pain in her knee she thought was a sprain turned out to be cancer – osteosarcoma. Then the day she had her port surgically implanted so that she could start chemo, her grandfather died unexpectedly. Then, when doctors tried to remove her tumor…

Fourteen-year-old Lacey has always been physically active. A cheerleader and a gymnast, her favorite hobby is wakeboarding. Now if you don’t know what that is, don’t feel bad; we didn’t either at first. A wakeboard is like a snowboard, only for water. Up until last May, Lacey’s biggest challenge was learning how to do a…

When Robert was diagnosed with cancer back in 2010, his father started calling him “Robert the Great” and the nickname stuck! And Robert has been great as he’s been dealing with all the procedures that come with leukemia. He was supposed to be in treatment for three and a half years. Then, just as his…

Mykenzi is tiny. She’s three years old and weighs only 23 pounds. When we met her, she had just finished two days of stem cell harvest. It’s about as much fun as it sounds. And she was headed into her third round of chemo. She has neuroblastoma – an adrenal cancer that occurs in developing…

Up until about a year ago, 12-year old Katelyn’s life was pretty normal. She loved the outdoors, climbing trees, and drawing dinosaurs. Then some strange things started happening. She could not seem to walk in a straight line and she kept falling down. Doctors told her mom it was just the flu, but the symptoms persisted….

Just a couple of weeks after Addi started kindergarten, she started limping. Then she kept saying her leg hurt. An x-ray led to the cause: osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. After that, everything in her world changed. Over the next seven months, Addi spent 117 days in the hospital, which included weeks and weeks of chemotherapy and…