Support Ava May's Battle Against Neuroblastoma Reoccurrence

Hi everyone, my name is Sarah Beth Lillard. My husband Mike and I have two daughters (Ava May, who is 15, and Annalynn, aka Peanut, who is 11). Our family has been active in our community, the schools our girls have attended, and our church. Our girls share our love of our community! Ava May, we often joke, was involved in EVERYTHING she could be… until our lives all drastically changed.

On January 23, 2024, Ava May was diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma cancer. The type of cancer that Ava May is diagnosed with is virtually unheard of for her age. She had undergone chemotherapy treatments and a resection of her tumor. Things were looking great and had transitioned to immunotherapy treatment, and we were awaiting radiation to start.

On 9/1, Ava May had a pain that led to an ER trip. The CT scan showed a mass of some sort and needed further imaging to determine/diagnose. She was transferred to WVU Children's (Morgantown, 2 1/2 hours from home). She had an MRI, and the surgeon felt we needed an MIBG scan for a more definite answer of what we were looking at. On Friday, September 6th, we received results that rocked our world. It was determined the pain/mass is a recurrence of Neuroblastoma, and it is in her hip and lymph nodes. She had surgery(resection of tumor) on 11/14. Unfortunately, they were unable to get all of the tumor . She had another round of chemo and this time combined with immunotherapy in December and 20 days of radiation in January. We did another round of chemo and immunotherapy in early February. We had scans on 2/26 and 2/27. Unfortunately it was not the news we had hoped for. Her cancer had actually spread to new areas during treatment.

Our current plan is 2 rounds of high-dose chemo (ICE) and then we will rescan after and develop our next plan. We are uncertain what the future holds , but we do know one thing—we have a long road ahead of us of treatment and visits to the hospital.

Many have asked what we need during this time—sadly, our biggest concern and need will be financial. Sarah Beth and Mike are self-employed, and while that allows for some flexibility during treatments, it also means loss of income/money. With the money raised, it will not only help us with traveling costs, food during those stays at the hospital, costs of her necessary treatments, etc. If you would like to donate directly, you can do that as well. Our Cash App is $WVCountryroads, our Venmo is @SarahBeth-Lillard, and Apple Pay is [phone redacted]. Gift cards to gas stations, DoorDash, or any food places would be fine as well.

I'd like to say thank you for reading this, and I hope by me telling you just some of our story, you can understand how hard this time has been for us all. If you could make a donation, big or small, it would mean the world to myself and our family.