On September 1, 2002, my wife Lori awoke with a ‘funny feeling’ that she should take our two year old daughter Sammy to the hospital. She had recently recovered from a normal chest cold, but sometimes her breathing was still laboured. Three hours later, we were being sent to Victoria Hospital in London to see a specialist. Hours later, we were being told that she had a tumour the size of a grapefruit in her tiny chest; her right lung was collapsed and her trachea was pushed to one side.
She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma, but her chances for complete recovery were very high. Sammy amazed all her doctors and nurses and handled the chemotherapy like a champ. Unfortunately, so did her cancer; her chemo protocol failed and three weeks before Christmas, the tumour had regained its size. She was re-admitted and my family went for bone marrow testing; without a transplant she was on borrowed time. Another, more intense, round of chemo began, taking her to the edge of death, in hopes of killing the cancer before transplant. Luckily, her identical twin sister, Vicky, and older brother Noah were perfect matches. My son was selected, and we were moved to the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children for transplant.
For the next fifteen weeks Sammy fought with all her heart. The transplant went well, and Sammy’s carefree spirit stayed strong. In the end, all the specialists and all the drugs couldn’t alter her fate. We thought our lives had been a terrifying roller-coaster ride up until that point, but when she went to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit for the last time, our seatbelts were removed. The first night we were told to notify family, she wouldn’t make it through the night. She did; her numbers that had seemed unrecoverable did recover. Although she couldn’t come off the respirator or come out of her drug-induced coma, a little ray of hope was ignited again.
A week later, we held our dear angel as she left this world, going to a place where cancer and massive pulmonary haemorrhage meant nothing. Instead of celebrating the third birthday of our two beautiful daughters Sammy and Vicky, we were at the funeral home, seeing our angel for the last time.
Sammy touched a lot of people in her short life and taught many people some valuable lessons. Make the best of your situation; making someone else feel better will make you feel better; and hug your kids every day because they are not as indestructible as they should be.
Bob & Lori
Founders of ROCK RIDE
“I’m very proud of what we have been able to accomplish with the ROCK. To take something so negative, something that, frankly, almost took me out, and then use that as the fuel to power us to keep going and make something positive out of it, I’m very proud of that,” Thomas said. “My family and I have weathered this thing together. The ROCK is our mission. It’s our purpose.”- Bob
To learn more ROCKRIDE, by clicking the link below.
Samantha’s legacy is ROCK Ride, the Ride 4 Our Cancer Kids. The annual motorcycle ride raised funds for Childhood Cancer Canada, which works with 17 children’s hospitals nationwide to fund critical life-saving cancer research, clinical trials and programs for childhood cancer families across Canada. Rock Ride has come to an end, but you can still donate at www.rockride.com to support childhood cancer research – as Bob says, ”kids shouldn’t need chemo.”
