Evelena Chee-Metternick

#EvelenasJourney

DREAM TRIP TO DISNEY WORLD
& GIVE KIDS THE WORLD VILLAGE

Goal: $5,000

Before Evelena was diagnosed the first time, she was a typical 4-year-old little girl living life, traveling, and enjoying playing with friends and family. Evelena would have her cousin come over to play and have sleepovers.

Evelena got sick one evening and we took her to the doctor the next day. They said it was hand, foot, and mouth disease. They sent her home and said she would be fine. Well, she got worse, so off to the ER we went. They took labs and sent us home again. We got a call the next morning telling us that she needed to be sent to the big hospital for more testing but we never got word she had cancer. One hour later, her Dr called and said it was B CELL ALL, and off to the big hospital in the city we went.

That was the start of our first 2.5-year journey with cancer. Her sister left two days later to go back to college but she did visit often. After 2.5 years, we thought she was good to go until…… Evelena relapsed four years and ten months after her first diagnosis. She is now nine and is living life, having fun in school, making tons of friends, and going on trips all around the USA. She went to Florida with her cousin and got really sick and we went to the ER and found out her cancer came back. We went home two days later and spent 29 days in the hospital.

Her life got turned upside down. Evelena missed the rest of the school year, had to cut her hair, and was stuck indoors for the whole summer. She was so weak that she needed a wheelchair and couldn’t ride her bike. She couldn’t go home to Hawaii to see her family because traveling was too risky for her. Evelena’s little body can’t take a lot of chemo because she had so much the first time that she couldn't do much more. So we wait to start a new therapy that has a little bit of chemo and the rest is a T-Cell therapy. Evelena has started school back up but she will have to miss a lot of school for this therapy.

So her getting to celebrate with a dream trip would mean so much. She will have the biggest smiles and giggles, knowing this trip is for her to celebrate what an awesome job she did fighting and beating cancer again.

- Renee Chee-Metternick