Hailey is a smart, caring, loving 9 year old little girl. She enjoys arts and crafts, gymnastics, and spending time with her friends. She loves her siblings with all her heart and soul. She has always been a very healthy and active child.
On the evening of August 26th, Hailey came to me with a little bit of swelling on the top of her foot. She wasn’t in any pain and was running around like normal. We just figured she hit it on something or was horse playing with her brother or sister and didn’t remember hurting it. So, we watched it for a couple of days and iced it, wrapped it, elevated it…. All the normal stuff. Well by Wednesday night, it wasn’t any better so we decided she needed an x-ray. So...the next day, off we went to CHOA urgent care for an x-ray, nothing was broken but the x-ray was abnormal. They immediately referred us to CHOA Emergency Room which took us right back and started blood work thinking she had a bone infection. The doctor came back with normal blood work and recommended an MRI. Fast track to MRI was for Hailey to be admitted because outpatient could be a week or more so we stayed int he hospital that night and she had her MRI Friday morning. Thursday night we met with the Orthopedic Surgeon and he recommended a biopsy along with the MRI to “rule out” certain things so Hailey had both and by Friday afternoon the doctor was able to confirm it was bone cancer. She has an Ewing’s Sarcoma Tumor on her foot. It is an extremely rare type of childhood bone cancer. It was unimaginable and the news we feared most.
We were sent home the following day to wait for a follow up call that would happen on Tuesday after the holiday weekend. We got home and our family was finally reunited so we could begin to process everything that just happened in such a short amount of time. We were all in awe of Hailey and how brave she was during all the pokes and the tests and the surgery. It is so hard to imagine being her age and being at school one day and facing a cancer diagnosis 24 hours later. She is so strong.
*If you post a tribute and make a donation via this site, it goes to Caring Bridge, not to our family. There is a Go Fund Me site set up under “ways to help” or by clicking this link :
https://www.gofundme.com/f/1r0m761lxc
