BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The students of Fairview Elementary School filled 26 homeroom piggy banks with nearly $1,500 in change in February.
Their effort was to provide families of children diagnosed with cancer with a little financial relief through the Fighting Children’s Cancer Foundation. The foundation provided the banks and now will throw a pizza party to the class which collected the most money.
FCCF had been contacted by Milly Williams, the mother of a Fairview second-grade girl, Jordan, who in February 2015 was diagnosed with leukemia while a first-grader at Carteret Elementary School.
In an interview at their Jerome Place home earlier this week, Milly and her husband, Robert, said that in January 2015 their daughter began to experience terrible pains in her left leg.
“We went to a pediatrician three times who said it could be a muscle spasm, a sprain, or growing pains,” Milly said.
Jordan then started getting pains in both her legs. She was missing school because of this.
But it was not until a slumber party she attended that the family decided on a different course of action. At the party, Robert said his sister and mother were alarmed by the girl.
“I was told by my sister that something was not right,” he said. “Jordan would be dancing one minute and the next, she couldn’t stand up and she would be crying.”
Milly did a google and contacted a doctor in Morristown who specialized in children’s illnesses.
“He saw a tumor in her left leg,” Milly said. “He sent me to an oncology doctor who diagnosed her with leukemia.”
This was Feb. 16, 2015, three days before the girl’s 7th birthday.
Jordan immediately started on chemotherapy and remained at Goryeb Children’s Hospital for three weeks. This hospital is located with the Morristown Medical Center. The chemo drained away the girl’s appetite and energy but destroyed the tumor, in part because it was detected early.
She remained home and received some of her medicine through a catheter placed into an area near her left shoulder. The catheter was removed in November 2015. At one time during this interview, Robert showed the catheter to Jordan. He told her that someday she will be able to show it to her own children and tell them about her journey.
Robert said it was a blessing that his daughter had a certain type of childhood leukemia, called acute lymphoblastic leukemia, that was more manageable, and not another type, called acute myelogenous leukemia, would have provided a far graver diagnosis.
But at one time, he said, Jordan lost so much weight, he contacted her doctor.
“It got frightening to me,” Robert said. “It got to the point where you could blow her away.”
Jordan’s doctor put her on steroids. She had already been on them.
“They put kids on steroids to gain weight so they can sustain the chemo,” Robert said. “It’s very helpful, the chemo, but if a person’s anatomy can’t take it, it can be extremely hurtful.”
After the catheter was removed, Jordan then began to take her medicine orally, in pill and liquid form. According to Milly, Jordan is now on 15 different chemotherapy medicines. Robert said, if all goes well, she will be off them by May 2017.
While away from school, the girl kept up with her classroom lessons through a robot, donated by the Valerie Fund, located in Maplewood. The robot had a camera which she could control to see and hear what was going on in her class, first at Carteret and, beginning in September 2015, at Fairview. Jordan dressed the classroom robot with some of her own clothes.
“I named it Chloe,” she said. “It’s a name from ‘The Brats’ TV show.”
A high-spirited girl, she said being taught by a robot was “kind of fun.” She showed-off a Barbie Doll with a laptop.
Because of Jordan’s condition, both her parents had to stop working to care for her. They received financial assistance from the Emmanuel Cancer Foundation, which was contacted by the hospital.
“Once you walk into this cancer situation, it’s a whole ‘nother world,” Milly said.
Because of the experience, Milly thought it would be a good idea for Fairview children to have a coin contest in February and donate the money to Fighting Children’s Cancer Foundation. She said she approached Principal Sal DeSimone who OK’d the contest. She also thought, if it were a success at Fairview, she would like to see it expanded to all Bloomfield school district elementary schools as an annual February event.
“The foundation was contacted for the piggy banks, counting the money and rewarding the class,” she said.
Milly had the Fairview piggy bank results on her smartphone and looked at them.
“I thought it would be a sixth-grade class that would collect the most money,” she said. “But it was Jordan’s second-grade class. It collected $201.77 out of a total of $1,438.49. That’s great for a little coin contest.”
Milly hopes to present all Bloomfield elementary school principals with her idea, the next being John Baltz, the Carteret principal.
“If all the schools say yes, each one can work with a different children’s cancer organization,” she said. “There’s so many and no one knows about them.”
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