Candlelighters honor 8-year-old battling rare form of childhood leukemia
Taylor Hammond may be only 8, but he is a fighter. His battle is against a rare and particularly vicious form of childhood leukemia.
Taylor has a hybrid form of T cell and B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and is on a waiting list for a life-saving bone marrow transplant. How does he see this fight with cancer?
“It’s OK. It’s just part of your life,” he said.
He was honored March 6 by the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Nevada with the group’s Nevada Shine Award during its annual gala at the World Market Center, 495 S. Grand Central Parkway.
“Taylor is fighting the big fight,” said Melissa Cipriano, executive director of Candlelighters. “But there’s a great sense of hope about him. We think he and his family are pretty special.”
The Children’s Specialty Center, 3121 S. Maryland Parkway, also was recognized that evening by the group that serves as many as 700 children annually who are facing cancer. The annual event is called Evening of Hope, and was apropos, as hope is what sustains Taylor and his adoptive parents, Summerlin-area residents Brian and Nicole Hammond.
Taylor was born on Nov. 11, 2006. He had been drug-exposed in the womb and was placed in family services. The Hammonds officially adopted him when he was 3. Now, they have six adopted children, and all were drug-exposed in the womb.
“Our kids are doing as well as they can be,” Nicole said, adding that she knew that children in foster care can come from homes where they likely were neglected or malnourished or even abused. “There are so many things that affect kids, and you just don’t know what you’re going to get.”
She recalled how Taylor woke up on Feb. 18, 2013, and was “screaming bloody murder, grabbing his chest. … I’m like, ‘You’re not having a heart attack. You’re 6 years old, so something is wrong.’ ”
She rushed him to the emergency room. He was in critical condition with a high fever, and doctors were trying to give him blood. Nicole heard whispers beyond the curtain — the doctors were discussing Taylor’s condition. He was transferred to another hospital and rushed to the intensive care unit and put on every monitor possible, all the while moaning in pain.
“The doctor walked in and said, ‘I’m 97 percent certain your child has cancer,’ ” Nicole said.
His cancer is so rare, the oncologist had seen only three previous cases. Taylor began chemotherapy by induction.
“He didn’t go into remission from that until the 90th day,” Brian said. “So, they were saying that because it was so aggressive and because it took so long for that to happen, it lowered his odds as far as survival.”
Taylor was given a 50 to 60 percent chance of survival if he had a bone marrow transplant. Without one, his odds were close to zero. But he is of mixed ethnicity and faces a 1 in 17 million chance of finding a match. Amazingly, a donor was found, one who matched all the markers for Taylor. But the donor backed out a few days before the surgery.
Taylor suffered a bad bout last fall and was hospitalized for eight days, enduring cranial radiation treatments.
“That was pretty tough on him. He still has a couple of burn marks,” Nicole said.
Every time Taylor goes to the hospital, the Candlelighters are there, providing the family with support and financial help for his treatments. The organization, headquartered at 8990 Spanish Ridge Ave., sent Taylor and his family to see Disney on Ice, to the Discovery Children’s Museum and to the circus.
“It helps to take his mind off the daily (routine), the chemo,” Nicole said. “It’s a time for us to be a normal family.”
Working with the medical team and other community agencies, Candlelighters can help support a family in receiving the best medical treatment by: coordinating insurance benefits; providing disease specific information; and coordinating treatment plans with physicians, nurses and social workers.
Co-payments alone may cost a family up to $250 per week depending on the child’s course of treatment, and Candlelighters will provide assistance for out-of-pocket medical expenses for co-payments of doctor’s visits and prescription medications.
“The whole organization doesn’t just treat the patient,” Nicole said. “It really wraps their services and their arms around the family. … you just can’t put a price on that stuff.”
For more information about Candlelighters, visit candlelightersnv.org or call 702-737-1919.
To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.
