This poor kid!

I'm here just to blather on a bit about my experience volunteering for an eight-year-old child with cancer, Tyler Tucker. This kid's story is just heartbreaking and I need to get it out. Imagine this is you:

Your todder falls down one day and scratches his face. The next day, he swells up like a balloon. You take him to the doctor, they check him over and come back with tears in their eyes to tell you its cancer. Not only is it cancer, it's a rare and usually fatal cancer. How does your world change in that moment?

Now a two year old is practically a baby. I am particularly tied to this story. I have an eight-year-old myself who is thankfully healthy. I also have a healthy two year old. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to hear that kind of news about my happy little guy.

Anyway, Tyler has had 36 surgeries in his short life. 36! I made a big deal about my single little back surgery. Now I feel like a big cry baby for making any fuss over it at all! This little guy had to have part of his jaw removed, including the hinge. For a long time, he could only eat through a tube. He also had part of one lung removed when the cancer spread to his lungs. The other lung responded well to chemotherapy, but the chemo has devastated Tyler's ability to heal.

Tyler twice undewent failed attempts to replace the lost jaw bone with bones from his legs. In both cases, the bone tissue died making the operations failures. Now Tyler's jaw is incredibly painful and both of his legs hurt him. His bones are so soft from the chemo that the screws will not stay in, so it hurts him all the time.

To avoid Tyler being put back on a feeding tube, the family has found a doctor at Johns Hopkins that will replace Tyler's jaw with a titanium one. He's having this surgery in two weeks and the family is terribly poor. They don't know how they will pay for the hotel stay and might end up sleeping in a van for two weeks. On top of this, Tyler has two baby brothers that will be brought along as well. This surely won't be much fun for them. I sent them $100 to help out. I wish I could do more.It is so frustrating to see a problem and not be able to do enough to fix it!