Gift Stories

Most five-year-old kids battling cancer would want a toy to cheer them up. But what Keonya longed for was her very own bed. Things were tight for her family before she got diagnosed with leukemia, but after she got sick, her mom had to quit her job to take care of her. In their small…

Sometimes you have to start a story with a face. This face! This is four-year-old Caroline at the precise moment she spotted her Team Summer gift! To understand how amazing this picture is, you need to know her back story. Last year, Caroline’s hands started shaking, the first indication her parents had that anything was…

Five-year-old Alex is the unstoppable kind of kid…which is a good thing, because there sure has been a lot trying to stop him lately. Last year he started complaining that his neck hurt. His parents thought he just got hurt on the playground or something. But the pain wouldn’t go away. Then an x-ray showed…

For Sarah, it all started a year ago March with a small bump on her leg. She would be turning twenty in a week and was busy finishing her sophomore year at college. Sarah’s pediatrician thought the bump was just a cyst but referred her to an orthopedist to be sure. But the waiting list…

Despite more than a decade difference in their ages, Monica and Team Summer kid Jocelyn have a unique bond. Sure, they have their cancer fights in common (3rd battle with leukemia for Monica; cancer of the retina for Jocelyn), but there is something else that’s hard to explain. They just click! Their mothers became friends…

If ever a girl needed a party, it’s four-year-old Brecklynn. Back in November 2015, she got sick at her pre-school and went to the pediatrician. Everyone thought is was just a virus. But the doctor took a chest x-ray anyway to rule out pneumonia. The results shocked everyone. There was a tumor in Brecklynn’s lungs….

When Caroline was a baby, she seemed to have a hard time taking a bottle. Because she had a twin sister, it was easy to spot the differences in development, but no one thought too much about it. Then, just before her first birthday, Caroline began throwing up and losing weight. Doctors thought it was…

Aliyah has been an amazing Team Summer kid. She’s been battling osteosarcoma for more than two years now, the disease that took her left leg. After she got her Team Summer gift – an adorable puppy she named Chewy… …she went on to give two Team Summer gifts herself – one to 4-year-old Grant who…

This is a story about a 15-year-old girl named Audrey who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was just 8 years old. Here’s what she looked like back then. Since she was diagnosed, she’s had surgeries to remove a large tumor on her ovary and cancerous lymph nodes, multiple rounds of chemotherapy, regular monitoring with…

The last four years have been really tough for 11-year-old Kaleb. When he was just 7 years old, he was diagnosed with a rare sarcoma. What followed was more than a year of chemotherapy followed by radiation, and Kaleb had to have his left kidney removed. He missed second grade and then had to repeat…