A Virginia mother, Nicole Dodge, noticed her toddler displaying some not-so-normal behaviors. Her youngest daughter, Natalie, was using only the bottom half of her arm. What Nicole didn't expect to hear when she took her daughter to the ER was that it was a result of stage 4 cancer.
Natalie was just 15 months old when she was diagnosed. Her parents figured that she could possibly have a shoulder injury. Natalie wasn't crying and didn't seem to be in a large amount of pain.
But a few days later, when Natalie fell down, she began screaming. That was when Nicole dropped her other children off at her mother-in-law's house and took Natalie to the ER.
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"I thought we were walking into an ER for x-rays and when I dropped the kids with my mother-in-law, I truly thought I would be home 'soon' just like I told them I would be," Nicole said in an Instagram post. But they spent over 12 hours in the hospital, and that was the day their lives changed forever.
After an overnight stay and a biopsy and CT scan, they were sent home. "We had a general idea within the first 24 hours that we were in the hospital that it was likely cancer," Nicole said.
Four days later, they received a call with Natalie's results. "It was high risk or stage 4 neuroblastoma," Nicole shared. "It's MYCN amplified, which means that her type of cancer grows at 10 times the rate of regular neuroblastoma."
"It was essentially the worst prognosis that we could have gotten," the mother said. "I absolutely lost it. My husband and I just went to our bedroom and sobbed. It was awful. We felt like there was absolutely no hope at that point."
The couple received great news when their doctor told them that Natalie had been accepted into St. Jude as a patient. The survival rate of cancer patients there is over 80%.
"And I looked at my husband and I said, 'We have to go,'" Nicole said.
Natalie received over 10 months of treatment at St. Jude. Today, as a 2-year-old, she has no evidence of disease and continues to have clear scans.
"It's truly, truly remarkable," Nicole shared. "I have seen other protocols at other hospitals around the world, and there are not as many kids having that NED status so early in treatment elsewhere, as I've seen at St. Jude."
