Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Ashley Nilsson and Riker and they're from Panama, Iowa.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And do you have other family members too?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
My husband Tony and then we have Landon Brody Scarlet
and Tait.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, you've got a nest full, don't you.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
We do.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You have a nursing background, but you had an ill son.
He had a fever. At some point he probably started
to think something's not right. What was that point?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
He developed a fever on a Thursday and Saturday, I
took him into the clinic because he was still running
a fever and I wanted him to be able to
go back to school on Monday, and knew that if
he needed antibiotics, I needed to go Saturday because in
our area we didn't have anything open on Sunday. And
so I took him in and we diagnosed him with
(00:46):
strep throats that day. So we started him on antibiotics,
and then by Tuesday he was still running a fever.
Having about eight doses of antibiotics in he shouldn't still
be running a fever, and so I called our pediatrician
and said, you know what's going on, and he said,
just give it thirty six more hours and then call me.
(01:06):
I said okay. And I woke up at about three
o'clock in the morning on Wednesday and checked his temp
and he didn't have a fever, and that happens a lot.
You called the pediatrician, all of a sudden, everything magically
goes away. Well, when he came out that morning, I
could tell that he still had a fever, and sure
enough he did. So I called the pediatrician back and
we decided to go in that day.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
And I thought he had pneumonia.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
That was just my gut feeling that day that that
was the reason why the antibiotics weren't working. And when
I got in the shower and was getting ready, I
had this kind of fleeting, I call it my divine
thought that what if he has leukemia? And because I'm
a nurse, I knew some of the signs. So I
(01:52):
went through that checklist and he didn't have any abnormal
bone pain, no abnormal bruising, no abnormal bleeding. So I thought,
no way, he just has pneumonia and we'll have to
treat the pneumonia. We'll probably have to stay in the
hospital for twenty four hours with ivy antibiotics, And so
we got to the clinic and I actually have a
video of him bouncing around on a pig in the
(02:13):
clinic that day, and our pediatrician said, I asked him
if we should do labs, and he said, astually, look
at how good he looks. If it was anybody else,
we wouldn't do labs. And he said, but I know you,
and we worked together, and he said, we can do
whatever you want to do. And I looked at the
(02:35):
ceiling tiles and they make a cross, and I knew.
I just knew in my gut he was still going
to run a fever on Friday. And I didn't know why,
I didn't know what I was after, but I knew
something was going on. And so we did labs that day,
and we came over to Omaha and had to run
some errands. And when we went home, I usually go
the north way out of Omaha home, and I decided
(02:56):
to go back around Council Bluffs, and because I thought,
what if he calls me, just had this gut feeling
he was going to call me and tell me to
come back. I made it all the way home to
the pharmacy back in Harlan and he called me and said, come.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Back down two Children's.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Come back to Children's.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
He said, I'm going to call the pathologist and we're
going to figure out why the system sent out the
send out lab and why it was flagging for something.
And he said it flagged for blast and hour rods.
I didn't know what that meant. My brain had shut off.
So I got home, started making dinner for the other kids.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My husband was in the field.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
It was October and he called me back and he said, okay,
you got to get to Children's.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
They're waiting for you in the er.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And I said some not very nice things to him
and said, we don't talk about my kid like this.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
We talk about other people's kids like this.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
And he said I needed to pack a bag for
about three days. So I went back in the house
and I I told Riker. I said, hey, Bud, your
blood work came back and doctor Sean, you know, wants
us to go back down to Children's and we got
(04:25):
to go check. You've got some bugs in your blood.
How do you tell your kid that this is what
we're going to go look for. And I told the
other kids that I needed them to help pack a bag,
pack a bag of clothes, and pack a bag of things.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
For him to do, so God bless them.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
They packed him a bag of clothes, and they packed
two bags of farm toys and a bag of stuffed animals.
And so now I had to find my husband, and
so I called him and he didn't answer. So I
looked at his location. It said it was at my
parents' house. Not answering, not answering. So I called the
feed store in front of my parents' house and I said, hey,
(05:09):
is Tony Semi over there? And they said no, he
just left about ten minutes ago.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Great.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
That means his phone is charging at my mom and
dad's house and he's out in the field. So I
had to call my dad, Hey, is Tony with you?
He said yeah, I just got here, and I said
I need to talk to him. And I have a
very unfortunate way of delivering news to my husband. I
don't forewarn him what I'm going to tell him. I
just said, hey, you need to get home. Sean thinks
(05:37):
that Riker has cancer, and we got to get to children's.
That resulted in some not so very nice words from
him either, and my dad will later tell people that
he didn't know a semi could stay on the road
driving that fast around that many curves because their mode
of transportation was a semi a combine and a tractor
was all slow moving vehicles. So I had started making dinner,
(06:02):
and our joke now is when life hands you a mess,
just make the darn.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Soup, because what else are you going to do.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
So I finished making dinner for the kids, and my
dad and Tony got to the house and I said.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
They're soup on the stove. We'll be back.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I don't know when, So we took off. We got
to Children's about eight thirty that night. And when you
walk into the er and you tell them your name,
I've been on the other side of that desk where
a patient tells you their name, and you know you
already have a plan in place. And we set our name,
and they looked at each other, and it just my
(06:37):
gut sank because I.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Knew that look. I knew what that meant.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
They already had a plan and I wasn't even in
the door yet. So that caused a lot of anger.
That caused a lot of frustrations just internally within me. No,
And so we went back to the room and the
portex says, what brings you in tonight and I said,
a probable cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
He just kind of looks at me. Nobody walks in
saying that.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I just I knew my gut was, you know, just
kind of screaming at me that night. And so we
did all the met with oncology and met with the team,
and that's where our journey started.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh that's that's quite a all in a matter of
what seven days?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Six days?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah, about six days, Yeah, about six days.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
You already alluded to it, But your suspicion of cancer.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Was that worse? Or was getting the actual news worse?
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Getting the confirmation was worse? The suspicion was, Okay, my
brain likes to think about all of the possibilities of
any situation, and that just comes from a nursing background.
You think about all of the things that you might
need to look at in a situation.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And so that was that was okay.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That didn't bother me, and that I didn't even really
remember that I had had that thought until we started
talking about how did we get there?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
And I went that was that was God? God did that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You and your husband obviously you ha said you had
to share the abrupt news over the phone. But tell
us about the time when the first time you actually
got to be together and talk about this diagnosis. Take
us through those moments, those first moments.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, when he got home, it was a lot of tears,
just tears, just because you've got five kids looking at
you and looking for guidance. And so we gathered together
in prayer, and we said a prayer together as a family.
We held hands and we just asked God to watch
over all of us and to watch over Riker as
we went to go figure out what was going on,
(08:52):
because we didn't know. My seventeen year old and are
now fourteen year old at the time both asked.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
If he was if he was going to die.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
We have a family friend who their son was diagnosed
at seven months old with rabdomyosarcoma, and so what my
kids know of childhood cancer is knocks passing away at
thirteen months old.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
And so I said, Nope, that's not going to be
our story.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I didn't know, but at that moment I had to
just tell them that wasn't going to be our story.
And so on the way to Children's we have an
hour drive and Rikers in the car with us, and
it's eight o'clock and it's, you know, nighttime, and he's
ready for bed, and we're trying to have a conversation
(09:48):
without having a conversation, which is really hard because you're
also trying not to scare him.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And so it was just a lot of we.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Don't know what we're doing, but we're going to probably
have to have blood work done again, and we'll figure
this out one step at a time, and that was it.
It really wasn't until Friday that we really got to
have a moment together when Riker was having his port
placed and his line placed and it was just the
(10:18):
two of us and our fifth child was a we
call him our bonus baby, not a planned pregnancy, and
I asked Tony, I said, did we get tape because
we're going.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
To lose Riker.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And he said, you can't think like that. We're not
going to do that. And I said, you know what,
You're right, we're not going to go there. That's Satan
trying to get in my space. And I remember looking
out over Dodge Street and I said, told Satan where
(10:59):
he could stick it, and my God was bigger than him,
and we were going to beat this and it was
going to be fine, And we shed a few tears
after that day, but really after that day, it was
just we had a task to do and we were
going to do that, and we did. And our goal
was to walk out of the hospital cancer free and
stronger than when we went in, and we did that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Ryker was six at this time, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah? He was six.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
How do you explain to a six year old that
he has cancer? How did that go down?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
You have an amazing angel who walks into your room,
and that was through Kylie, our child life specialist, and
oh man, I would not have survived. None of us
would have survived this journey without her and without Freedo.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Fredo's the support Doug.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Freedo is our childlife dog and Riker's best friend. And
Kylie came in and she spent a lot of time
with Riker building a relationship while we were getting a
confirmation diagnosis from our providers, and so they built a
pretty quick bond, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Tell us a little bit about Kylie, her child life specialist,
and Freedo.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So the dog, Yeah, Freedo the dog. Frido's a Golden
Retriever who.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Little did she probably know when she walked into our
room that Riker would take such a liking to her,
but he is an animal lover and if there was
an adventure or something to be done, Ryker and Frieda
were up to it. We took some photos at Christmas
of the two of them. They made arts and crafts.
They did a painting. If you didn't know that dogs
(12:46):
could paint, they can. You put peanut but put paint
inside of a ziploc bag on a canvas and then
put peanut butter and the dog will actually paint because
she's licking the peanut butter and it spreads the paint.
So we did did pop print Christmas trees?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
We what else did you get? What your upon it?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
We made a turkey painting and then like god, I
date like kuy you would like put blue shape over
the words, and I had to try and get some.
We went to the movie theater you watch movies with
Frido mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
We asked Kylie to be there to help us tell Riker,
and she did a great job of walking through what
do leukemia is cancer of the blood, And she did
a great job of showing him what normal blood should
look like and what his looked like and he had
these little invaders that were in his blood and we
just had to give him medicine to get that out.
(13:48):
And going through that, he It's amazing how resilient kids are,
because again it was okay, we're just gonna do this.
The hard part was the side effects of the nausea
and then not feeling good, and even that was okay.
The hardest part was when Tony and the other kids
(14:09):
would come and visit on the weekends and they would
have to go home and we had to stay.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So get us up to date. Riker looks like he's
doing pretty well. Tomaze playing with a baseball over here,
if it's an update.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So we spent five months here at Children's. We finished
treatment in March of twenty twenty four, and now today
he remains in remission and we are coming up on
our two year anniversary in October of his cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And to look at him, you would never know.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
If you didn't know that he went through what he
went through, you wouldn't know. I actually asked him a
couple of weeks ago, I said, does it ever feel
like we didn't go through cancer? Does it feel like
it was just a bad dream? And he said no.
I said, okay, well it was real for you. Sometimes
I feel like it was just this nightmare that did
it really happen? I know we went through that, but
(15:03):
did that really happen? Because our life has been able
to almost seamlessly, we've jumped right back into life. But
that was our goal, that's what we were working towards
because we had to go home to four other kids
and we're a very busy, active family and we didn't
have time to spend time in physical therapy and doing
(15:25):
all the other things that potentially could have come. And
he played baseball the spring after we got done with treatment.
He joined swim team the fall after we got done
with treatment, and now he swims. He's currently playing soccer
this fall, and we'll do swim team this winter.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
He's caught up in school. And it's a miracle.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I'm glad you said that, because that's a word we
use a lot, and it's radiothon, and we don't try
to use it as a throwaway or a gimmick. It's
called miracle make and we have miracle makers who are
listening right now who have either supported the Radiothon through
years or maybe thinking about supporting the Radiothon this year.
(16:11):
But I guess the question is pretty obvious, but do
you believe in miracles?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I do.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I don't know how we would have gotten through this
any other way other than with God by our side,
and truly a divine intervention in a miracle. And we've
lost now so many friends to this just vicious disease,
and it breaks your heart that they don't get to
(16:39):
have the same miracle that we do. But we live
every day for those kids that we've lost. They have
a reason in our story and we had a reason
in theirs, and for that will forever be grateful. But
miracles do happen every day, and sometimes we don't always
know why someone gets one and someone doesn't. But we
(16:59):
do have to rally together and support each other because
at the end of the day, no one understands what
you're going through other than another family who's been handed
that same diagnosis and heard those same words and walked
a similar path.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
There's somebody who might be listening right now who hasn't
had a chance to respond, has heard a lot of
your story here, has heard your story here, and what
would you tell them about some of the things that
we do with the money provided by the radiothon that
makes things special for kids in this hospital, and the
research that's gone into things like fighting leukemia. What would
(17:36):
you say to them to maybe pick up the phone
and this time become a miracle maker.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You never know what that thing is going to be
that is going to make a difference. Riker had a
pumper car that was part of his journey and that
had been donated to the hospital prior to us, and
we actually donated two more pumper cars to the oncology
unit in his honor. And those are things that they
(18:06):
seem so minuscule in the grand scheme of all of it.
But any donation that we can put towards something that's
going to make a difference in a kid's life and
bring the fun in a really yucky situation, it's worth
every penny. It's worth every penny. So whatever can be
given and whatever can be donated, it makes all the difference.
(18:31):
Whether you recognize it in that moment or not, it
all makes a difference.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
We're going to wrap it up here, but take off
your nursing background cap. If you can reduce a moment,
and just as a mother, you have a thank you
card here in front of you, A blank thank you card.
The children's hospital, the doctors, the childlife specialists. You've addressed
it to them all, But what's it going to say?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Okay, thank you, thank you for giving us a second
chance to continue our life as a family of seven.
Without all of them, I don't know what our story
would be. The individuals that walked into our space and
(19:32):
were put in our path.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
That alone was a miracle.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
We couldn't have asked for a better staff, better providers,
better support. They have become our family as much as
we've become a part of theirs, and so we will
forever be grateful to them and their team and everything
that they've given to us, because that is that's priceless.
This is Ashley Nilsson and Riker and they're from Panama, Iowa.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And do you have other family members too?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
My husband Tony and then we have Landon Brody Scarlet
and Tait.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, you've got a nest full, don't you.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
We do.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You have a nursing background, but you had an ill son.
He had a fever. At some point he probably started
to think something's not right. What was that point?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
He developed a fever on a Thursday and Saturday, I
took him into the clinic because he was still running
a fever and I wanted him to be able to
go back to school on Monday, and knew that if
he needed antibiotics, I needed to go Saturday because in
our area we didn't have anything open on Sunday. And
so I took him in and we diagnosed him with
(00:46):
strep throats that day. So we started him on antibiotics,
and then by Tuesday he was still running a fever.
Having about eight doses of antibiotics in he shouldn't still
be running a fever, and so I called our pediatrician
and said, you know what's going on, and he said,
just give it thirty six more hours and then call me.
(01:06):
I said okay. And I woke up at about three
o'clock in the morning on Wednesday and checked his temp
and he didn't have a fever, and that happens a lot.
You called the pediatrician, all of a sudden, everything magically
goes away. Well, when he came out that morning, I
could tell that he still had a fever, and sure
enough he did. So I called the pediatrician back and
we decided to go in that day.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
And I thought he had pneumonia.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
That was just my gut feeling that day that that
was the reason why the antibiotics weren't working. And when
I got in the shower and was getting ready, I
had this kind of fleeting, I call it my divine
thought that what if he has leukemia? And because I'm
a nurse, I knew some of the signs. So I
(01:52):
went through that checklist and he didn't have any abnormal
bone pain, no abnormal bruising, no abnormal bleeding. So I thought,
no way, he just has pneumonia and we'll have to
treat the pneumonia. We'll probably have to stay in the
hospital for twenty four hours with ivy antibiotics, And so
we got to the clinic and I actually have a
video of him bouncing around on a pig in the
(02:13):
clinic that day, and our pediatrician said, I asked him
if we should do labs, and he said, astually, look
at how good he looks. If it was anybody else,
we wouldn't do labs. And he said, but I know you,
and we worked together, and he said, we can do
whatever you want to do. And I looked at the
(02:35):
ceiling tiles and they make a cross, and I knew.
I just knew in my gut he was still going
to run a fever on Friday. And I didn't know why,
I didn't know what I was after, but I knew
something was going on. And so we did labs that day,
and we came over to Omaha and had to run
some errands. And when we went home, I usually go
the north way out of Omaha home, and I decided
(02:56):
to go back around Council Bluffs, and because I thought,
what if he calls me, just had this gut feeling
he was going to call me and tell me to
come back. I made it all the way home to
the pharmacy back in Harlan and he called me and said, come.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Back down two Children's.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Come back to Children's.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
He said, I'm going to call the pathologist and we're
going to figure out why the system sent out the
send out lab and why it was flagging for something.
And he said it flagged for blast and hour rods.
I didn't know what that meant. My brain had shut off.
So I got home, started making dinner for the other kids.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My husband was in the field.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
It was October and he called me back and he said, okay,
you got to get to Children's.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
They're waiting for you in the er.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And I said some not very nice things to him
and said, we don't talk about my kid like this.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
We talk about other people's kids like this.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
And he said I needed to pack a bag for
about three days. So I went back in the house
and I I told Riker. I said, hey, Bud, your
blood work came back and doctor Sean, you know, wants
us to go back down to Children's and we got
(04:25):
to go check. You've got some bugs in your blood.
How do you tell your kid that this is what
we're going to go look for. And I told the
other kids that I needed them to help pack a bag,
pack a bag of clothes, and pack a bag of things.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
For him to do, so God bless them.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
They packed him a bag of clothes, and they packed
two bags of farm toys and a bag of stuffed animals.
And so now I had to find my husband, and
so I called him and he didn't answer. So I
looked at his location. It said it was at my
parents' house. Not answering, not answering. So I called the
feed store in front of my parents' house and I said, hey,
(05:09):
is Tony Semi over there? And they said no, he
just left about ten minutes ago.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Great.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
That means his phone is charging at my mom and
dad's house and he's out in the field. So I
had to call my dad, Hey, is Tony with you?
He said yeah, I just got here, and I said
I need to talk to him. And I have a
very unfortunate way of delivering news to my husband. I
don't forewarn him what I'm going to tell him. I
just said, hey, you need to get home. Sean thinks
(05:37):
that Riker has cancer, and we got to get to children's.
That resulted in some not so very nice words from
him either, and my dad will later tell people that
he didn't know a semi could stay on the road
driving that fast around that many curves because their mode
of transportation was a semi a combine and a tractor
was all slow moving vehicles. So I had started making dinner,
(06:02):
and our joke now is when life hands you a mess,
just make the darn.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Soup, because what else are you going to do.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
So I finished making dinner for the kids, and my
dad and Tony got to the house and I said.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
They're soup on the stove. We'll be back.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I don't know when, So we took off. We got
to Children's about eight thirty that night. And when you
walk into the er and you tell them your name,
I've been on the other side of that desk where
a patient tells you their name, and you know you
already have a plan in place. And we set our name,
and they looked at each other, and it just my
(06:37):
gut sank because I.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Knew that look. I knew what that meant.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
They already had a plan and I wasn't even in
the door yet. So that caused a lot of anger.
That caused a lot of frustrations just internally within me. No,
And so we went back to the room and the
portex says, what brings you in tonight and I said,
a probable cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
He just kind of looks at me. Nobody walks in
saying that.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I just I knew my gut was, you know, just
kind of screaming at me that night. And so we
did all the met with oncology and met with the team,
and that's where our journey started.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh that's that's quite a all in a matter of
what seven days?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Six days?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah, about six days, Yeah, about six days.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
You already alluded to it, But your suspicion of cancer.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Was that worse? Or was getting the actual news worse?
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Getting the confirmation was worse? The suspicion was, Okay, my
brain likes to think about all of the possibilities of
any situation, and that just comes from a nursing background.
You think about all of the things that you might
need to look at in a situation.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
And so that was that was okay.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That didn't bother me, and that I didn't even really
remember that I had had that thought until we started
talking about how did we get there?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
And I went that was that was God? God did that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You and your husband obviously you ha said you had
to share the abrupt news over the phone. But tell
us about the time when the first time you actually
got to be together and talk about this diagnosis. Take
us through those moments, those first moments.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, when he got home, it was a lot of tears,
just tears, just because you've got five kids looking at
you and looking for guidance. And so we gathered together
in prayer, and we said a prayer together as a family.
We held hands and we just asked God to watch
over all of us and to watch over Riker as
we went to go figure out what was going on,
(08:52):
because we didn't know. My seventeen year old and are
now fourteen year old at the time both asked.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
If he was if he was going to die.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
We have a family friend who their son was diagnosed
at seven months old with rabdomyosarcoma, and so what my
kids know of childhood cancer is knocks passing away at
thirteen months old.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
And so I said, Nope, that's not going to be
our story.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
I didn't know, but at that moment I had to
just tell them that wasn't going to be our story.
And so on the way to Children's we have an
hour drive and Rikers in the car with us, and
it's eight o'clock and it's, you know, nighttime, and he's
ready for bed, and we're trying to have a conversation
(09:48):
without having a conversation, which is really hard because you're
also trying not to scare him.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And so it was just a lot of we.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Don't know what we're doing, but we're going to probably
have to have blood work done again, and we'll figure
this out one step at a time, and that was it.
It really wasn't until Friday that we really got to
have a moment together when Riker was having his port
placed and his line placed and it was just the
(10:18):
two of us and our fifth child was a we
call him our bonus baby, not a planned pregnancy, and
I asked Tony, I said, did we get tape because
we're going.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
To lose Riker.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And he said, you can't think like that. We're not
going to do that. And I said, you know what,
You're right, we're not going to go there. That's Satan
trying to get in my space. And I remember looking
out over Dodge Street and I said, told Satan where
(10:59):
he could stick it, and my God was bigger than him,
and we were going to beat this and it was
going to be fine, And we shed a few tears
after that day, but really after that day, it was
just we had a task to do and we were
going to do that, and we did. And our goal
was to walk out of the hospital cancer free and
stronger than when we went in, and we did that.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Ryker was six at this time, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah? He was six.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
How do you explain to a six year old that
he has cancer? How did that go down?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
You have an amazing angel who walks into your room,
and that was through Kylie, our child life specialist, and
oh man, I would not have survived. None of us
would have survived this journey without her and without Freedo.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Fredo's the support Doug.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Freedo is our childlife dog and Riker's best friend. And
Kylie came in and she spent a lot of time
with Riker building a relationship while we were getting a
confirmation diagnosis from our providers, and so they built a
pretty quick bond, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Tell us a little bit about Kylie, her child life specialist,
and Freedo.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So the dog, Yeah, Freedo the dog. Frido's a Golden
Retriever who.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Little did she probably know when she walked into our
room that Riker would take such a liking to her,
but he is an animal lover and if there was
an adventure or something to be done, Ryker and Frieda
were up to it. We took some photos at Christmas
of the two of them. They made arts and crafts.
They did a painting. If you didn't know that dogs
(12:46):
could paint, they can. You put peanut but put paint
inside of a ziploc bag on a canvas and then
put peanut butter and the dog will actually paint because
she's licking the peanut butter and it spreads the paint.
So we did did pop print Christmas trees?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
We what else did you get? What your upon it?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
We made a turkey painting and then like god, I
date like kuy you would like put blue shape over
the words, and I had to try and get some.
We went to the movie theater you watch movies with
Frido mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
We asked Kylie to be there to help us tell Riker,
and she did a great job of walking through what
do leukemia is cancer of the blood, And she did
a great job of showing him what normal blood should
look like and what his looked like and he had
these little invaders that were in his blood and we
just had to give him medicine to get that out.
(13:48):
And going through that, he It's amazing how resilient kids are,
because again it was okay, we're just gonna do this.
The hard part was the side effects of the nausea
and then not feeling good, and even that was okay.
The hardest part was when Tony and the other kids
(14:09):
would come and visit on the weekends and they would
have to go home and we had to stay.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
So get us up to date. Riker looks like he's
doing pretty well. Tomaze playing with a baseball over here,
if it's an update.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So we spent five months here at Children's. We finished
treatment in March of twenty twenty four, and now today
he remains in remission and we are coming up on
our two year anniversary in October of his cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And to look at him, you would never know.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
If you didn't know that he went through what he
went through, you wouldn't know. I actually asked him a
couple of weeks ago, I said, does it ever feel
like we didn't go through cancer? Does it feel like
it was just a bad dream? And he said no.
I said, okay, well it was real for you. Sometimes
I feel like it was just this nightmare that did
it really happen? I know we went through that, but
(15:03):
did that really happen? Because our life has been able
to almost seamlessly, we've jumped right back into life. But
that was our goal, that's what we were working towards
because we had to go home to four other kids
and we're a very busy, active family and we didn't
have time to spend time in physical therapy and doing
(15:25):
all the other things that potentially could have come. And
he played baseball the spring after we got done with treatment.
He joined swim team the fall after we got done
with treatment, and now he swims. He's currently playing soccer
this fall, and we'll do swim team this winter.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
He's caught up in school. And it's a miracle.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I'm glad you said that, because that's a word we
use a lot, and it's radiothon, and we don't try
to use it as a throwaway or a gimmick. It's
called miracle make and we have miracle makers who are
listening right now who have either supported the Radiothon through
years or maybe thinking about supporting the Radiothon this year.
(16:11):
But I guess the question is pretty obvious, but do
you believe in miracles?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I do.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I don't know how we would have gotten through this
any other way other than with God by our side,
and truly a divine intervention in a miracle. And we've
lost now so many friends to this just vicious disease,
and it breaks your heart that they don't get to
(16:39):
have the same miracle that we do. But we live
every day for those kids that we've lost. They have
a reason in our story and we had a reason
in theirs, and for that will forever be grateful. But
miracles do happen every day, and sometimes we don't always
know why someone gets one and someone doesn't. But we
(16:59):
do have to rally together and support each other because
at the end of the day, no one understands what
you're going through other than another family who's been handed
that same diagnosis and heard those same words and walked
a similar path.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
There's somebody who might be listening right now who hasn't
had a chance to respond, has heard a lot of
your story here, has heard your story here, and what
would you tell them about some of the things that
we do with the money provided by the radiothon that
makes things special for kids in this hospital, and the
research that's gone into things like fighting leukemia. What would
(17:36):
you say to them to maybe pick up the phone
and this time become a miracle maker.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You never know what that thing is going to be
that is going to make a difference. Riker had a
pumper car that was part of his journey and that
had been donated to the hospital prior to us, and
we actually donated two more pumper cars to the oncology
unit in his honor. And those are things that they
(18:06):
seem so minuscule in the grand scheme of all of it.
But any donation that we can put towards something that's
going to make a difference in a kid's life and
bring the fun in a really yucky situation, it's worth
every penny. It's worth every penny. So whatever can be
given and whatever can be donated, it makes all the difference.
(18:31):
Whether you recognize it in that moment or not, it
all makes a difference.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
We're going to wrap it up here, but take off
your nursing background cap. If you can reduce a moment,
and just as a mother, you have a thank you
card here in front of you, A blank thank you card.
The children's hospital, the doctors, the childlife specialists. You've addressed
it to them all, But what's it going to say?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Okay, thank you, thank you for giving us a second
chance to continue our life as a family of seven.
Without all of them, I don't know what our story
would be. The individuals that walked into our space and
(19:32):
were put in our path.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
That alone was a miracle.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
We couldn't have asked for a better staff, better providers,
better support. They have become our family as much as
we've become a part of theirs, and so we will
forever be grateful to them and their team and everything
that they've given to us, because that is that's priceless.
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