![]() Because of long-term effects from his treatment, he’s smaller and might be slower than his teammates, but they can’t beat his work ethic. He plays basketball and will try out for volleyball too. He’s in seventh grade and made the soccer team at school this year. That big day also happens to be his mom’s birthday and will be “the best birthday present ever,” she said. On March 10, after five years off treatment, he’ll be officially declared a survivor. “He got up there, so proud,” Vickie said. There wasn’t much to shave – just wisps spared from the side effects of chemotherapy – but that didn’t matter to Jack.Ī bunch of his family members had shaved, plus it was for a noble cause – to raise money for pediatric cancer research to help kids like him. Baldrick’s was just four months into his cancer treatment. He’d vomit and then start playing again,” Vickie said. ![]() “He spent, I want to say, 77 nights in the hospital the first year. He would continue treatment for the next three years and six months. The night of Jack’s diagnosis, the oncologist sent them home for Thanksgiving with instructions to hurry back the next day or if he developed a fever.Īs Thanksgiving dinner was being served, Jack spiked a fever and they rushed back to the hospital, where the 4-year-old started chemotherapy the next day. ![]() He collected fun band-aids and distributed them to hospitals, because he knew how much a cool band-aid could help a kid during a procedure. Even during treatment, Jack liked to give back. Jack in the hospital in 2010, shortly after his diagnosis. The little boy needed to get to the Children’s Hospital in Chicago right away. Jack’s blood work was not normal, he said. When they got back, Vickie noticed that the doctor had tears in his eyes. We are anticipating, waiting, and he’s like, ‘Mom, I have to go to the bathroom!’ Because he’s clueless of what was going on.” “I always have to say this part of the story, because this is such a typical kid thing to do. “Of course, the doctor comes in and Jack says he has to pee,” Vickie said, chuckling. On the day before Thanksgiving in 2009, Vickie and her husband, John, found themselves in a small room in the hospital, waiting on pins and needles for the results of the blood work. “That night, overnight, he slept in our bed and he was crying in his sleep.” We were trying to do things like get his pajamas on without him thinking about it. “That whole night, he would not walk at all. Jack was just 4 years old when he started treatment for leukemia.
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