Zion's Cancer Treatment

My name is Easha Mae and I am a full-time stay at home mom to our precious 6yr old son, Zion, who was diagnosed with Autism at the age of two. He is my miracle baby, my biggest blessing, and the joy of my life. He has gone through so much in his 6yrs on this earth, including special needs school, continuous and intensive therapies. 

Zion is such an amazing, full of life, smart, loving, and silly kid. He loves to build with Lego, watch Pixar movies, computers, sing at church, draw and read. 

Two weeks before his 6th birthday, he had a seizure at school, which he has no history of, and was rushed to the ER - they released him the same day. Not even a week and half later, he had another one at home before school. I had never seen a seizure and was so scared. What they described last time was happening right before my eyes! I did what they told me to do if he were to have another one, but he wasn't coming out of it, so I called 911. This time he was admitted to Children's Hospital. They ran a lot of test and did tons of blood work for the week while  we were there.  One of his Doctors came in to share his latest test results with me & my mom. She showed me the scan of Zion's brain - they found a tumor on the left side of his brain and estimated that it had been there for about a year. The Doctor said they needed to remove  ASAP, so surgery was scheduled for four days later.  Zion's surgery was a 6hr success. They were able to remove the entire tumor and told us it was benign. 

A few weeks later we received the results from pathology at St Jude Medical Center, confirming that Zion has Histiocytic Sarcoma, a very rare Cancer that is usually only found in adults from the neck down. There isn't a lot of data or research on this type of Cancer and he needs to start treatment right away! We have seen Doctors in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia trying to put together a treatment plan for Zion. They came up with three types of radiation treatments, but only one will work best for his type of Cancer, Proton Beam Therapy. It is very expensive and not available here in Ohio.  This treatment is only offered in Florida, Boston, and Philadelphia. Recently, Zion had another seizure on July 11th & this one was very odd! He hadn't had one in awhile, so it caught all of us off gaurd. He begun to scream in a high pitch voice, whlie his head was turned to the side with his arm fully stretched out and his hand contracted, running in a circle like something was crawling on him, and he couldn't see me, like he was blind, but he was really having a seziure. I got him to the floor, turned him on his side and finished timing the seizure. This one lasted ten minutes and he wasn't coming out of it, so I had to adminster diazepam. It wasn't working and we had to call 911. The Dr's checked him out, his vitals were good, but they said it was unusual that he wasn't waking up and wanted to admit him, but we were leaving for Philadelphia to get him fitted for his mask for the machine, learn more about the port, meet with our team of doctors, and to see where we would stay, When we came back home, I met with his Oncologists and he informed me that Zion's latest MRI revealed a small tumor in the same area as the tumor they removed.

We've chosen  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia  and Zion begins treatment on July 28th.
We are leaving our entire support network of family, friends, and our church for 2-3 months. The hotel is 5mins from the hospital in downtown Philadelphia.  We are currently on the Ronald McDonald House and Hosts for Hospitals wait list, but if a child with a more severe medical issue than Zion comes in, they will get in before we do. The hospital discount for the hotel is $300 for two nights and parking is close to $35 a day. A one month stay in the hotel will run us a little over $5,000. That amount does not include food and gas.

We are going by faith, not knowing how we're going to make it after the first couple of weeks. Getting Zion Cancer free is my top priority. So please, if you are able and willing to make a donation big or small, we would greatly and humbly appreciate it. 

Thank you in advance,
Easha Mae & Zion

 p.s. My mother, Lynette Brown is the beneficiary for this campaign. She will be staying with us, and handling the donations so I can keep my focus on Zion during treatment.