Better Treatments the Goal of Hockey Marathon
What began as an unrelenting fever in the fall of 2020 ended with a difficult diagnosis for the Jones family. After several days of tests, bloodwork and a bone marrow biopsy at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, Caitlyn and Tyler learned their little girl, Sadie had a type of cancer called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL. She was not even two years old at the time.
“It was the worst day of my life,” says Caitlyn.
However, there was good news, too: ALL is treatable and Sadie had a strong chance of making a full recovery.
“They told us: Don’t worry, this is what we’re going to do to fix it,” says Caitlyn. “While that was a relief, it would still be a long road – 2.5 years.”
Right away, Sadie began high-dose chemotherapy and steroids. Her team had to go hard with chemo in the first phase of treatment in hopes of killing off all the cancer cells. It was tough on her little body. She was at the hospital one to two times per week for chemo infusions and was also taking oral chemo at home.
She lost weight, lost her hair and suffered from muscle fatigue. In the second phase, beginning January 2021, the infusions were less frequent, but longer. Because the chemo needed to be flushed from her system after these infusions, Sadie had a lot of two-day “sleepovers” at the hospital. It’s a lot for anyone to endure, it’s an unimaginable burden for a child of 2, who should be playing in the yard and jumping in puddles.
It’s for kids like Sadie, and the dozens of other children who are diagnosed with cancer every year at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, that players take to the ice April 5-16 in Chestermere for Hockey Marathon for the Kids.
Hockey Marathon for the Kids
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New cures and therapies for hard-to-treat cancers and rare blood disorders are in development all over the world, and your support of Hockey Marathon for the Kids will fund a new Pediatric Clinical Trials program that builds upon existing excellence in the hospital’s delivery of novel treatments to bring more clinical trials to Calgary so more kids in our community can benefit.
Though hard, the treatment worked well and follow-up testing showed Sadie did not have any remaining cancer in her body. Beginning in the spring of 2021, Sadie began the lengthy “maintenance” phase of treatment, which involved chemo infusions once a month at the hospital, in addition to oral chemo and steroids at home. Sadie received her last chemo treatment in April 2023 and has been in remission since. She is now five years old, enjoys baton twirling, and recently saw the ocean for her very first time.
“Bad things happen to good people, but they happen to the right people. We were the right people because we were able to find the strength to get through such a difficult time,” says Caitlyn. “Our strength came from our community and specifically the Alberta Children’s Hospital for the treatment they provided for Sadie.
“We would like to say thank you to everyone involved with the Hockey Marathon. You are saving lives…of not only kids like Sadie, but of parents like us as well. We are forever grateful for the life we now have.”
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