Your child has cancer: what the coming months ask of a family, and where help comes from

The week everything else stops

A parent notices bruising that does not fade, or a limp, or a fever that keeps coming back. There is a pediatrician visit, then a specialist, then a scan, and then a doctor says a word that changes the family's calendar for years. In the days that follow, one parent is sleeping in a chair beside a hospital bed while the other is trying to keep a job, feed the other children and understand a treatment plan written in a language they did not speak last week.

I serve as Community Engagement Chair for Leia's Kids Foundation, and I want to write about this as plainly as I can, because the families we walk alongside tell me the medical side is only half of what hits them. The other half is logistics, money, siblings and the slow erosion of the ordinary. If your family is here right now, this is for you. If you are a neighbor, a teacher or a business owner who wants to help a family like this, it is for you too.

Why the diagnosis costs more than the treatment

Insurance, where a family has it, addresses the hospital bill. It does not address the rest. Treatment is often far from home, sometimes in another city or state when a clinical trial is the best option, and that means gas, flights, hotels and meals for months. One parent frequently has to stop working or cut hours, so income falls at the moment expenses rise. Child care for brothers and sisters becomes a daily puzzle. Small things stop being small: parking at the hospital every day, takeout because nobody has cooked in weeks, a car that picks the worst month to fail.

Then there is the weight nobody invoices. Siblings watch their parents disappear into the hospital and learn to need less. Teenagers in treatment lose the ordinary life their friends are living. Young adults between seventeen and twenty-four are treated in a system built for small children or for older adults, and often feel they belong to neither. Parents hold all of it together and have no one to hold them. In my experience, the families who get through this best are not the ones with the most money. They are the ones who are not alone.

• Travel and lodging for treatment away from home, including clinical trials
• Lost income when a parent leaves work or cuts hours
• Child care for siblings during hospital stays
• Daily costs that multiply: parking, meals, prescriptions, gas
• Isolation for the child, the siblings and the parents
• Grief that begins long before any outcome is known

What to organize in the first weeks if this is your family

Ask the hospital for its social worker or family navigator early. Most pediatric oncology programs have one, and they know the assistance programs, the parking passes, the lodging options and the paperwork for employer leave. Pick one person outside the household to be the information point, so you are not retelling the same update twenty times a day. Let them run a shared calendar and a meal schedule, because people will ask how they can help and will do nothing unless given a specific task.

Keep a folder, paper or digital, with every receipt tied to treatment: mileage, hotels, meals, child care. You will need those for assistance applications and possibly for taxes, and nobody remembers March in September. Tell your employer and your children's school what is happening and ask what flexibility exists, in writing. And ask the care team about resources for siblings and for your own mental health. Everything I say here is practical, not medical; the treatment questions belong to your child's doctors, and they want you to ask them.

• Hospital social worker or family navigator contact
• One outside person to manage updates, meals and rides
• A folder of every treatment-related expense
• Written requests to employers and schools for flexibility
• A list of the specific things you need, ready for the people who offer

When it is time to ask for help from outside the family

Most parents wait too long. They tell me they did not want to take help from a family that needed it more, or they thought they could manage until the next paycheck. The moment to reach out is when travel for treatment is on the calendar, when one income is about to pause, when the siblings have no one to pick them up, or when you realize you have not slept at home in a week. None of those are signs of failing. They are the ordinary shape of this disease, and the help exists because so many families have stood exactly where you are.

If your family is facing childhood cancer anywhere in the country, you can contact Leia's Kids directly. If you are reading this because a family you know is going through it, you can connect them with us, or ask them whether you may. Sometimes the most useful thing a friend does is make the first call.

How Leia's Kids walks alongside a family

Leia's Kids Foundation is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in McKinney, Texas. It was founded by Leia Hunt Toellner, a two-time childhood cancer survivor, when she was eighteen and still in high school. Because she lived it, the programs are built around what families actually run short of, and the mission is stated simply: to bring hope, joy and support to children and families facing childhood cancer, and to remind every child that they are loved, known and royal.

Financial grants help parents cover the costs that insurance does not, in particular travel for treatment, including clinical trials, and child care for siblings. Royal Deliveries are packages sent from Princess Marygold's Castle to children in treatment, a moment of being celebrated in a season that is mostly needles and waiting rooms. For adolescents and young adults aged seventeen to twenty-four, the foundation runs all-inclusive mental health retreats, and there is a separate mother-daughter retreat, because the parent carrying this needs care as well.

The Hope Library publishes books and journals written for children in this situation, including a grief journal for siblings, who are so often the quiet casualties. The foundation advocates for federal childhood cancer legislation so that the next family has more than this one did. And each Christmas, North Texas families in treatment are sponsored so the holiday still arrives. Every program is something a family can see and hold, which is why donors and sponsors can see exactly where their support went.

• Financial grants for treatment travel, clinical trial travel and child care
• Royal Deliveries to children in treatment
• Mental health retreats for patients aged seventeen to twenty-four
• A mother-daughter retreat
• Hope Library books and journals, including a sibling grief journal
• Advocacy for federal childhood cancer legislation
• Christmas sponsorship of North Texas families

What it takes to fund this work

Every grant, delivery and retreat has a cost, and the foundation is funded by people and businesses who decide this matters. The largest single source is the annual Hope in the Kingdom Royal Ball in Frisco, where sponsorships and tables carry the year's programs. Beyond the gala, monthly and one-time donations keep grants flowing when a family's need does not wait for an event, and in-kind donations supply the Royal Deliveries and retreat materials.

Business partnerships are structured around what the company can give: a sponsorship, a matching campaign, a volunteer day, products or services a family needs. I am often asked what size of gift is useful, and my honest answer is that a family's grant is usually made up of many ordinary gifts. What drives the foundation's capacity is not one large donor but a wide circle of people who stay.

How to choose a cause your business can stand behind

Business owners ask me how to vet a charity, and I encourage the questions. Confirm the organization is a registered 501(c)(3) and ask for its federal tax ID, which Leia's Kids publishes. Ask what specific programs your dollars fund and whether you can see them: a family helped with travel, a delivery sent, a retreat held. Ask who founded it and why, because an organization built by someone who lived the problem tends to spend differently from one built around a brochure.

Then ask how your team can be involved beyond the check. The sponsorships that mean the most to a company's people are the ones they can touch: packing deliveries, attending the ball, sponsoring a family at Christmas. Finally, ask how the organization communicates with sponsors through the year. You should hear what happened because of your gift, not only receive the next request.

• Registered 501(c)(3) status and a published tax ID
• Programs you can see and name
• A founder and leadership with a clear reason for the work
• Ways for your team to participate, not only pay
• Regular reporting back on what your support did

What well-meaning people get wrong

Saying call me if you need anything, which puts the work of asking on the person with the least capacity to do it. Bring the specific thing instead: dinner on Tuesday, the siblings picked up on Thursday, the lawn mowed, a gas card. Sending a mountain of toys to the hospital when the family has nowhere to put them and the child is too tired to play; a well-timed, well-chosen Royal Delivery does more than a truckload. Forgetting the siblings, who notice every gift that goes to the hospital and not to them.

Businesses sometimes make a one-time gift during a fundraising push and then disappear, when steady, smaller support is what lets a foundation promise a family help in April. And families themselves make one understandable mistake: declining help early to save it for someone worse off. There is no queue to protect. Taking help when you need it is how this works.

What happens when you get in touch

If you are a family facing a diagnosis, reach out and tell us where you are in treatment and what is hardest right now. We will talk through which programs fit, from a grant application to a Royal Delivery or a retreat for a teenager, and connect you with the right person at the foundation. If you are a teacher, student or individual who wants to volunteer or donate, I will match you with what is needed this season.

If you are a business owner in Dallas–Fort Worth or beyond, we will have a conversation about what fits your company: a table or sponsorship at the Hope in the Kingdom Royal Ball in Frisco, a partnership, a Christmas family sponsorship or a volunteer day. You will know exactly which program your support funds, and you will hear what came of it. That is the promise I make to every sponsor, because it is the promise the foundation makes to every child.

Questions people ask me