One of the most cheerful, optimistic nurses I have worked with has a daughter whose childhood cancer has just relapsed. Please read her sweet but heart-tugging story, donate if you can, and share. Thank you!


When you’re 12, you’re supposed to be playing with friends and enjoying school, not fighting cancer. Certainly not fighting cancer twice!

Annalee Rowe was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia right before Christmas in December 2019. Her family was shocked and scared. But the 6 of them pulled together to do whatever they could to beat it. Annalee endured months of weekly chemo with a long drive to a hospital in another state. She lost her hair, gained swollen chemo weight, had to stay home from school, and then faced the unbearable isolation and restrictions of the Coronavirus pandemic. Because of her high risk, the entire family has stayed isolated for the last 12 months. 

After all Annalee had been through, she was in the final phase of treatment. She had a finish date and was making plans for what she would do when she had beaten cancer. Last week that all came crashing down when she was hospitalized with agonizing bone and joint pain. The leukemia had returned. She now faces a much grimmer journey than before. The survival rate for leukemia is over 90%. The survival rate for relapse is just over 50%. She will be in the hospital for the next three or so weeks receiving a newer, more intensive therapy. Within the next few months she will have a bone marrow transplant, where she will be in the hospital for 6 weeks. They are praying that one of her siblings is a match. Her treatment will continue for several years.

Can money fix this? No amount of money could bring her a cure any faster at this point. But what money COULD do is make her and her family more comfortable as they face this daunting future. They are a thrifty, hard-working family who have been following a plan to get Annalee’s dad, a nurse, through graduate school. Four years ago they moved their family of 6 from their big house into a two-bedroom duplex. The parents sleep in the downstairs family room. Annalee shares with her 5-year-old sister. In order to fit all the furniture in the room, Annalee sleeps on a mattress on the floor under her sister’s elevated bed. Her 10-year-old brother shares a room with the 7-year-old sister. There is no room to get away from each other. This became even more obvious because of the pandemic. While many people have been able to return to mostly-normal lives, they can’t. They can’t risk Annalee getting Covid. So the whole family has been isolating themselves for the past 12 months. They do homeschool. They try to do fun things as a family. They were looking forward to Annalee getting the Covid vaccine perhaps sometime near the end of the year, when clinical trials for her age group end. But with the relapse there is no telling when she will be able to get the vaccine. 

The plan has always been to buy a house this year. The kids talk about “when we buy our forever home” almost every day. It helps them get through the frustration of having so little space to themselves. The parents have saved the down payment and were preparing to make an offer on a house just days before Annalee relapsed. The good news is that the money they have saved can help them live through the times when Nathan cannot work. But the devastating news is that if this trial uses up their down payment they will be starting over again financially. They will have to push off that dream of a new home even farther. 

Imagine Annalee coming home to her forever home! She turns 13 next month. Imagine this teen getting her own room for the first time. Imagine them having a fenced backyard and different places in the house to go to for some alone time or family time. 

Any help you can give this brave family would be forever appreciated.