The Gr8t Chase

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The Gr8t Chase The Gr8t Chase is a local non profit raising awareness for childhood cancer. I struggled to find our niche. Worry alone for your child, exhausts you. All of it!

While Chase was in the hospital we knew one day we would start a foundation to help others going through the same thing, as it was his spirit. After his passing I have concentrated efforts on raising funds for cancer research and grant wishes for first time and reoccurring cancer patients. As a mom who sat beside a hospital bed for almost eight months, with very few nights at home, I know money, bills, worry and anxiety tend to add up. TIme crawls yet everything seems so out of control and needs to happen NOW. One tiny thing gone wrong, depletes your energy , leaving you unable to think or solve problems. While helping other families it hit me what I wanted The Gr8t Chase to become. I had a family who was having to live in Baltimore for months on end. The grass needed mowing, rains had flooded their shop, weeds were killing her landscape, and insurance was telling them they had to come home, yet that was the only hospital that specialized on her type of cancer. I wanted to fix it! Didn't this mom have enough to worry about without grass sending her over the edge? I want to ease those types of burdens. To have our Foundation swoop in, like Chase, and help someone carry that load. Buy medicine when insurance says no and doctors say it's a matter of life and death. Mow a lawn. Build a ramp for the wheelchair they now have to have to enter their home since chemotherapy has taken the use of their legs. Help purchase a tombstone worthy of their loved one, not just one they can afford. I want to help carry those burdens and lift them off my fellow cancer and life-limiting illness families shoulders and let them focus on what really matters; being strong for who needs them. That is The Gr8t Chase's purpose and our goal.

09/30/2026

Day 30 of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month:

Grief and the hereafter

Grief. It has no boundaries or timeline and it can unfurl it's cold fingers and grasp your heart and mind out of nowhere, sometimes crushing them beyond existence.

I have often described the feeling during death and the days, weeks , sometimes years after, as being stuck in Jello. You see the world around you moving, but sounds and sights are muted and shaking all around you. You know you are moving but you are stuck. Then it slowly melts away and you are but a piece of driftwood floating out to sea. You can see the shore and every life line others thrown at you, but you just can't raise your arms to hold on. Slowly but surely you start treading water and before you know it, you are swimming back to shore. Some days you have to float again and start all over, but eventually your sea legs will reach the shaky, sandy ground and you will stand. Like a newly born deer, but you stand.

I couldn't sleep. The nightmare's of his last few moments here on earth haunted me, stronger than anything out of horror movies or Stephen King could write. I couldn't eat and lost down to 102 pounds and was in a size 00. I wanted to feel anything and everything but the loss of Chase. I welcomed and invited any other pain, humiliation, guilt, wrong love, numbness - ANYTHING to not feel the hole his loss created. It's easy to stay there....in the warm, safe Jello.

But you HAVE to face it. You can't start treading that water until you do. It's just a fact of life, even when you don't want to live it. I would read 👣 'Footprint's in the Sand'👣 a lot during this time and just begged and thanked God for carrying me. I still do. It's really the only explanation of how to survive it. It's not MY strength, it's his.

He gave me this story and one of the GR8TEST golden lights to share for 10 years. My job as a mother didn't end on March 10, 2008. I do what I do, because my job isn't over.

Just last week both of my other children came to me saying they had essays or project's to do. One was "Interview about your childhood" and that child asked instead could they do the interviewing as to not have to talk about their childhood. I asked them why. I was given the answer "Well, my brother died of cancer. My grandfather, died of cancer. My dog died of cancer. And my cousin died of cancer. Fun Times." The other child has a speech on how something from their childhood changed them to be who they are today. That child talked about how classmates got up one after another claiming "Sports, cheer, or band" made a huge impact on their childhood, "Then I had to get up there and say 'My brother had cancer, my mom was gone for 7 months, and then he never came home. Kinda brought down the room. But I got to say how we made something good come from it by helping others."

Talk about a shot to the heart. Grief doesn't end. Like that kid said - it is usually up to the parents effected that fight for a change so that the death or the survivor's fight against cancer mean something other than that grief. I find that a very sad statistic. People can unify & fight over the craziest things, but things that MATTER they turn away.

These cancer kids deserve more than 30 days and they deserve more than .04 cents to every dollar for research. They deserve more than THREE APPROVED CANCER MEDS in the last 21 years. They deserve more...period.

I will fight for every mother and father to never have to say goodbye way too soon, until the day I am lying in the space beside the one who was my golden light that showed me the way.

This is my promise to you. I fight for my kid, but I fight for yours too.

THAT is why we are The Gr8t Chase. 🎗❤️

09/29/2026

Childhood Cancer Awareness: Day 29

**THIS POST/PICTURES MAY BE SENSITIVE FOR SOME

They say Hollywood movies are fiction- but most are not. I watch movies where the main character has flashes of the past jolt them to remember something buried deep in their subconscious. When I see that, I know the writer has experienced gut wrenching pain to know where to draw that storyline from. It’s like that a lot for me in my story. I think it’s because God only allows us to work through that kind of pain incrementally, as a person is ready to face it.

Our story continues the day after the last post, meeting Puck. We watched Chase rapidly decline. Within 24 hours, that happy, laughing child’s kidneys started shutting down & he slept off & on all day. The next day, he slept almost the full day. He woke up when his best friend got there & he asked if he had seen his puppy. The next time, he asked for me to read to him a journal I had started keeping for him from the moment I found out I was pregnant. I wrote one for all three of my kids daily. It was for the day they left me, but for college or to move out on their own, so maybe they would know the extent of a mother’s love and remember how very much I loved them. I wouldn’t let them read it until the day I gave it to them. Never did I think it would be the day they left me in this world. I didn’t read much before he drifted back off to sleep.

He woke again after 8 PM & looked around the room. He said “Is everyone here?” He asked for everyone to come in because it was a good time for a prayer, which we did. He asked for his doctor who came back after just leaving the hospital, & he ran into the room after a few minutes after he was called. Chase simply handed him his autographed Chicago Cubs Baseball, the Drs favorite team, & said “Thank you for trying to save me.”
That took all his strength. He mouthed I Love You... & went back to sleep. He took his last breath for at 3:50 AM, on March 10, 2008, with his Dad & I singing Jesus Loves Me to our son.
And a community mourned with us.

Visitation lasted almost 8 hours to get everyone in. They lined up around the building twice. I don’t remember much of that. Chase wore his #8 special made Predators Jersey. His casket special ordered in white, and he had a Preds flag for the skirt. His pall was white and yellow roses and daisy’s. He was buried with his stuffed pug and several trinkets that friends left for him- mostly baseballs.
His friends were his honorary pallbearers and they all wore his jerseys and made a tunnel for him to go through with his hockey sticks.

On the way to the cemetery, every intersection was blocked with police or fire and people lined the streets to pay their respects. At times I felt we were in a parade instead of procession. He was laid to rest beside his Uncle Steve, aka Hokey, in Evergreen cemetery.
His uncle Barry released 2 white doves that kept circling the cemetery in an 8 pattern. They weren’t trained to do that, so it was a moment that brought peace that an “8” was drawn in the sky by these birds that symbolize love. (Eight was Chase's favorite number, his baseball number, and the seat he liked to sit in, all because he said it was like the infinity symbol. No start and no ending - just forever.)

They say 1 in 7 children will die from Childhood Cancer. It has been my experience, that they have the numbers wrong. I’ve attended many more funerals than I have celebrations for the “survivors”. I use quotations because the fear never leaves. It’s a life of scans and holding your breath waiting on the closet door to creak open and the boogey man to walk back into the room. It’s an agony in itself.

09/27/2026

Childhood Cancer Awareness Day 27

We had done a week of radiation and we were ready to start preparing for our last and final week in the hospital. We were trying to keep everything light and happy. Chase is still in good spirits. Before leaving radiation that day we asked when he would come down the next day for his treatment. The girl told us he wasn’t scheduled. We stressed to them that he was supposed to get 14 straight days of radiation, so she went to the little room with the TVs to see what was going on.

When she came back she couldn’t look us in the eye. She kept saying “the doctor didn’t schedule it. I don’t know anything else, you will have to talk to the doctor. I’m so sorry.” She had huge tears welling in her eyes as she rubbed her hands together in a nervous tic, and stared at her feet.

We walked back to our room and ran into Clint‘s brother Scott and I was almost in a complete panic. I knew something was wrong. I told the nurse to get me the doctor because I felt something had happened and we weren’t being told. Clint tried to calm me by saying it had to be an accident. Chase said “when mom‘s Spidey-senses are tingling, she’s usually right.” The nurse came back in and said that the doctor was on his way but there wasn’t any change or new notes, so she knew what we knew, which was one more week of radiation and then home with hospice.

Uncle Scott told Chase they should take a lap in the hallway to let us talk and Chase said “I’ve seen that look before! We better take two! I’m going to take you Uncle Scott to my favorite spot in the hospital where you can see the most beautiful legs and breast you’ve ever seen in your life!” He wiggled his eyebrows at me when they left the room. Of course that made me laugh because he was taking him to the window that overlooked Kentucky Fried Chicken. (That kid was so funny!)

The doctor came in. He said that he had just talked to radiology and it just wasn’t working. He showed us the placement scans. Every spot that was lit up was possibly cancer. It was everywhere. It was the outline of my child's body, and looked like he had swallowed fireflies. So I asked if that meant that we got to go home that day and they advised us to stay. I said “Chase wants to go home! He NEEDS to be home.” And they said “he wants to go home to LIVE but at this point he would only be going home to die. Your home is full of happy memories right now. We’ve watched you guys put little man at the top of your list for months but we’re begging you to put yourself first this time and not take him home so that you do not put that memory there. You have help here that you and he will need.” I agreed but I didn’t like it. So I asked if we would be at the hospital another 4 to 6 weeks then and he said we would be lucky if we had 4 to 6 days. Chase could still change his mind and do the whole treatment and we start over. So when Chase got back he said “I don’t wanna die but I also don’t want to live like this.”

That was March 6.

We had to sign a DNR that day. He was joking, laughing, looked and felt better than he had in months- and I had to say don’t save him.

Chase wanted a phone so he could talk or text everybody as he thought of something he wanted or needed to tell them- so he got a phone. He thought he was something else with that flip phone! 😍 He spent his day programming that. To this day, I still pull it out and hold it just to see my number where he programmed it as “My Mommy”. Something as small as a flip phone brought him so much joy even in the midst of knowing he only had a few days to live.

09/26/2026

Childhood Cancer Awareness: Day 26
Faith

I can’t tell you how many times Chase was lying over his little yellow bucket and he would say “The devil is really working today mom! But me and God are not gonna let him win.!”

Or the countless numbers of times that we talked about death and what it would be like to die. No one believed more, that God was going to protect and heal him, than Chase did. And when he realized that his true healing was going to be in death, he wasn’t afraid. He feared more of being forgotten then he did passing away because he knew the joy that was waiting for him when he was gone.

It took me a little longer to reconcile with the type of healing that he had, even if I do find joy knowing I will see him again one day. I can’t imagine Chase’s light shining for long if he had healing this side of earth and he still couldn’t do the things that he loved; walk, play ball, hunt, fish.

All the things his little drawn hands could not do because his fine motor skills were diminished due to treatment, would have blown that light out. I know God’s plan was bigger than ours and his will was greater than my own. I see “reasons” every day, though it does not make the load easier to bear.

Chase declared the day after he made the decision ‘radiation for 2 weeks then come home to live out his last days’ that “Now, I need to get baptized!” We told him that he would safe in the arms of God but he insisted. “I’m not taking ANY chances!” 😍

He wasn’t supposed to get the port in his chest wet so the doctors and the nurses had to figure out a way to seal it and protect it. We called our preacher, Brother Nickey, and he came right then. They had a room that was unoccupied so we all went down there and Chase was baptized in the hospital bathtub.

Clint carried him back to his room, still dripping water, and a towel draped across him. Nurse Leslie was in a glass room where they have medicines locked up. Chase raised his towel and mooned her. 😂 then he said “God will forgive me for that right?! Yep, cause I still feel so good!”

Upon getting back to his room and in bed he said “Wow! It’s true! You really do feel different! I feel alive for the first time in 7 months!” And he threw his arms in the air in victory.

In the weeks that followed, we got word that scattered throughout Tennessee, 17 children obeyed the gospel through his example.

Victory for anything in this life really is only in Jesus. If you need to know him, and need to feel new again, it’s never too late, until it is. We will help you find that love if you need help. Please reach out.

09/26/2026

Childhood Cancer Awareness: Day 25
Radiation

Radiation alone does not cure cancer. It’s purpose is to shrink the tumors and the cells that cause cancer to shrink so that chemotherapy has a greater chance of working.

The children have to take several sets of imaging to get accurate measurements. The doctors in radiology then draw with marker the outline of where the radiation “beams” need to point. They have to wear a mask, for protection, that gets attached/screwed to the table as they have to be still. **See the net looking contraption that went over his face in pictures

Chase panicked at this. He became claustrophobic. They decided he needed to stand to be able to reach everywhere they needed anyway- only he physically couldn’t stand. So they made him a lean on and strapped him in. He gave it all he could to be able to "stand" there and still when he had no strength in his legs.

We would stay in a little room outside of the radiation room watching him on screens on tiny TVs while the big red numbers counted down the radiation blasts.

09/24/2026

Childhood Cancer Awareness Day 24
Facing Mortality 🎗️💖🎗️ Kids fighting cancer deserve so much more than they get.

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Murfreesboro, TN

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