2025 Radiothon - Meet Evelyn

Meet Evelyn, a Radiothon champion who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia B-ALL. Evelyn and her family remember Helen DeVos Children's Hospital as a group of people who treated them like family. Hear Evelyn's story here.

You can donate so that more families can feel like family in their toughest time. Visit https://corewellhealth.org/foundation/west/helen-devos-childrens-hospital/radiothon to donate!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My daughter is Evelyn Singalov, and she was seen at
Helen DeVos for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She was four years old.
One day she started complaining about joint pain. Nothing's broken,
nothing weird, nothing, you know, And then she started getting
fevers our er here and travers didn't know. They thought

(00:21):
it might be reactive arthritis to a virus, and we
treated that and they actually got me hooked up with
the rheumatologist in Devas. But I mean it was stressful.
I had to carry her everywhere. She couldn't walk, she
was always in pain. And then we took her to Devace.
I was shooken up. I called everybody I knew, but

(00:44):
they assured me like, this is what we do here.
This is the main thing we treat here. And I'm like, okay, okay,
I'm in the right place. I knew what it was.
We had a plan, we were going to get treatment
the first month we were in there. We're in for
a whole month. She also had to do physical therapy
because she couldn't walk. She was on like all sorts

(01:05):
of pain medication. I want to say. We started seeing
results after the first two weeks that she could walk again.
She was actually happy. It was intense. Then after that,
they're supposed to kind of hit remission in twenty eight days,
while Evelyn didn't, so we ended up having to do more.

(01:25):
I feel like I just was guided by them and whatever.
They said, you have to be here on this date,
and I'm like, okay, I'll be there. She was part
of a study. We had the bling backpack, and this
is a continuous bag of chemo just pumping into her
for like five weeks straight. She had to have that
bag changed every two days, they were saying. But they

(01:50):
even made it so that we could get a four
day bag change. So they made our bag bigger so
we didn't have to go down as much because we
were like, we'd have to stay here, so that they
were able to do that, because I really think it
made a difference. Everybody always made me feel like I
wasn't alone. I learned her love for crafting there because

(02:11):
everybody came by with something for her to do. And
now I can't get her to stop the resilience. I mean,
she went through so much and she didn't even know
it felt like she was like whatever, I'm here, But
she was happy the whole time. Now it's like the
doctor isn't scary, it's fun. Like these people, they care,

(02:32):
they're my family still, Like we've been doing this for
Evelyn's eight now four years. Luckily now we are out
of treatment, which is great. It does feel like years
of your life kind of got chopped off. But she's
still her crazy self. I mean, just like what I
would imagine she would have been. Then your money's not

(02:56):
wasted here. Every penny, every penny go towards something amazing,
and that's something amazing is Helen DeVos Children's Hospital. All
of your donations will go to that incredible organization right
here in West Michigan. Visit B ninety three dot com
Westmichiganstar dot com or call one eight hundred B nine

(03:20):
three kids that's one eight hundred B nine three ki
ds to donate and find out more about Radiothon twenty
twenty five