Gracie's Journey: Support Her Cancer Battle

Gracie's story starts off around the middle of june 2023 she had been fighting off a viral infection . We noticed things like headaches, loss of balance and throwing up. Roughly a week or so later she seemed to be doing better and we took the family to the water park for the day where she laughed, played and enjoyed the day as any three year old would. The next day I woke her to take her to her mimi's before I went to work and she started throwing up and wouldn't stop and also said her head hurt bad, i called my mom and we rushed gracie to onslow memorial hospital where they took us straight back to a room and we spoke to a traveling doctor from another hospital who was on call came in and within half a hour cat scans an labs came back and had him worried. He walked in the room and gave us the news no mother wants to hear, I called a chopper and we are going to fly her to Duke. Less than a hour later they had her loaded and on the way. It took us around 4 hours to get to the hospital by the time we got there they had more labs and mri scans and we were met by a team of doctors that told us the scans showed a mass in her brain. On june 26 2023 they took her in for brain surgery to remove the mass after 8 hours the team came out an told us the mass was connected to her brain stem they got as much as they could they would send the mass off to pathology and once we got the results we would know more. Gracie had some hurdles after surgery where she had some complications an wasn’t able to walk or use her hand, she also trouble speaking. Thankfully the doctors said that would correct itself in time once pathology came back we were told gracie had medulloblastoma brain cancer and would need chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. The next 18 months we went through 11 rounds of chemo 3 bonemarrow transplants. After a year and some change of being in remission from her brain tumor (medulloblastoma), it has unfortunately returned. They found 4 nodules and removed them on Thursday May 1st 2025. Which were also found to be connected to the brain stem, This has led to the need for medical treatment..again, which will require traveling to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) around the first week of June for care. It’s a challenging and emotional time for us as we navigate through this difficult situation. Gracie will undergo radiation treatment for about six weeks at CHOP, which will be an intense and challenging process. After that, she will go back to Duke for chemotherapy, depending on how things progress. It’s a tough journey, but our family is doing everything we can to get her the best care. Thank you for all the love and support.❤️