Christmas Comes Early For Five-Year-Old Suburban Kid With Cancer
(CBS) -- Christmas came early Sunday for a west suburban family gearing up for another round of cancer treatment for their five-year-old son.
Chris Ellis will check in to the hospital tomorrow for a week-long clinical trial for his stage four neuroblastoma that will leave him highly radioactive.
But his mother Danielle won't have to worry about buying and wrapping the family's gifts because volunteers with the group Christmas without Cancer have taken care of that for them.
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Gerri Neylon came up with idea 11 years ago while working as a nurse in the oncology department of Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.
That first year, she asked friends and family to donate gifts and gift cards to a young woman she met in the hospital who was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. The response was three vans full of donations.
Since then, Neylon has set up a website for her non-profit, www.christmaswithoutcancer.org, and it has delivered gifts to 12 families in the last week alone.
Danielle Ellis says the gifts are such a relief - allowing her to focus on Chris and his treatment and not stress out about getting presents for her husband Ted, seven-year-old daughter Maria and Chris.
She won't have too much down time, though.
Caring for Chris after he leaves the hospital means wiping up any surface that he touches for two weeks while the radiation is still seeping out in bodily fluids.
