My name is Katie Quintas, and I run the only national nonprofit, Here to Serve, that helps families with children battling cancer with wraparound physical, emotional, and financial support. We have set up this GoFundMe page to help the Dunn family financially as they try to save the life of their daughter, Summer, diagnosed with Metastatic Osteosarcoma. Making matters worse is that their daughter, Summer, is being treated in OH when they live in FL.

The story of Summer Dunn is a testament to the jarring speed with which life can shift from the ordinary to the unimaginable. In June 2025, Summer was living the quintessential life of a young girl—full of energy, dance classes, beach trips, and the thrill of roller coasters at Universal. Just a day before her life changed, she was laughing on a slip-and-slide. There were no warning signs, no limping, and no complaints of pain.

The shift happened at 10:00 PM on a Saturday. While staying at her grandmother's house, Summer was getting into her bathing suit for a late-night swim when she tripped. It was a simple fall, but her femur struck the edge of the bathtub with enough force to break her leg. What seemed like a straightforward orthopedic injury quickly spiraled. After an initial ambulance ride to a local children’s emergency room, X-rays prompted an immediate, unexplained transfer to a larger hospital in Jacksonville.

At 4:00 AM, in a sterile room at the Jacksonville hospital, Summer’s parents, Taylor and Savanna, were met by a doctor they had never seen. He spoke of a "lesion" in Summer’s femur. To a family with almost no history of cancer, the word felt abstract until the doctor clarified: they believed Summer had bone cancer—likely Ewing Sarcoma or Osteosarcoma.

"It felt like the world stopped," her mother recalled. "I remember feeling like all the air had been sucked out of me." At just 28 years old, she felt a desperate, childlike wish for a "real adult" to step in and make the nightmare vanish. But the reality was a 9 cm tumor and a daughter sedated in the next room, unaware that her life had just been cleaved into "before" and "after."

Summer was placed in a spica cast—a bulky, awkward hip-to-toe encasement that made even basic care an exhausting task. The family was sent home to wait. The agonizing suspense ended on Friday, June 27, when an oncologist casually confirmed the diagnosis. A few days later, they had to break the news to Summer. Her reaction was a gut-wrenching plea: “No, no, no. I do not want to have cancer.” Her immediate fear, like so many children, was the loss of her hair.

Seeking the best possible care, the family traveled to a pediatric cancer center in Cincinnati in early July. The medical team there expressed concerns about the original biopsy, forcing Summer to undergo a second procedure. This meant "starting over" emotionally, living through the terror of a diagnosis twice. By the last week of July, the diagnosis of Osteosarcoma was confirmed. Further scans revealed the fight would be even harder: four small nodules were found in her lungs, indicating the cancer had already metastasized.

Treatment began on August 1, 2025. Initially, the team hoped for "limb salvage" surgery using a donor bone. However, a severe blood clot developed during chemotherapy, taking that option off the table. The choice narrowed to a metal rod reconstruction or amputation. Knowing a metal rod would likely lead to chronic pain and multiple future surgeries, the family faced the reality of amputation. To their surprise, Summer met the news with incredible maturity, leaning toward an above knee amputation with her future mobility in mind.

Summer underwent the amputation in October, 2025. While the pathology later showed the chemotherapy was working—showing high tumor necrosis—the immediate aftermath was a harrowing week of unrelenting pain. Summer screamed for hours, her agony frequently minimized by medical staff who urged her to "push through."

The battle then moved to her lungs. On December 2, 2025, she underwent her first thoracotomy, where surgeons removed nine nodules; four were cancerous. On January 22, she underwent a second thoracotomy to remove five more, three of which were cancerous.

Through the surgeries, the spica cast, and the grueling rounds of chemo, Summer’s spirit remained a beacon. She turned her hospital room into a community hub, starting a "badge reel swap" with her nurses to trade fun, colorful clips. As she enters her final cycle of chemotherapy and prepares for radiation to address the remaining blood clot risks, Summer Dunn continues to prove that while cancer can take a limb, it cannot touch her resilience.