Walk aims to help families with kids battling cancer

Jacob, a two-year-old bundle of energy and joy, is a rainbow baby, his mother, Koreen Huard, says as she lets a reporter into her South End home.

“Do you know what a rainbow baby is?” she asks, as Jacob launches into an animated conversation in the language two-year-olds speak, but only their parents understand.

It turns out rainbow babies are children born after the death of the child in a family, a ray of light for families enduring unbearable grief.

Huard says Jacob was named by his sister, Breanna Baxter, who made the request in 2009, near the end of her battle with a spider tumour that had wrapped around her spine and spread to her brain. She died, age nine, in December of that year, just three months after her diagnosis.

“She knew I was planning on having a baby, although she didn't know I was pregnant yet,” Huard says. “When she was in Sick Kids, she said to me, 'I know you're going to have a baby some day, and it would be really nice if you had a boy if you named him Jacob.' ”

If it was a girl, it would have been Hannah, since Breanna was a fan of Disney's Hannah Montana TV show. In fact, her nickname was Hannah Breanna. On May 11, her mother will help honour Hannah Breanna's memory through the first Breanna's Walk for Pediatrics. The fundraiser aims to help other families who have found – and will find – themselves in a similar position, facing the unimaginable.

The speed Breanna was taken from her was a shock, as was the entire ordeal, Huard says. In August 2009, just weeks before she was to start at a new school, she fell off her bike and sprained her leg, a minor injury that refused to get better. As days passed, Breanna was having more and more trouble walking.

“On Labour Day weekend, she woke up and couldn't walk,” Huard says. “She had no strength in her left leg.”

Huard was told, on repeated trips to the emergency department, that it was the sprain and that it just was taking time to heal. By late September, she couldn't walk, so her mother took her to emergency again and demanded to see a paediatrician.

The next day, she took Breanna to a paediatrician at the hospital, who admitted her and, after her condition worsened, ordered an MRI. The plan was for a two-hour scan, examining Breanna from her waist up to her head.

“Within the first 20 minutes, the radiologist came out and talked to the nurse,” Huard says. “When I got to the hospital, (the doctor) told me to pack a bag, that they were flying her to Sick Kids because she had a tumour in her spine.”

After 15 hours of surgery, doctors emerged to tell her they couldn't remove the tumour because it had intertwined itself around Breanna's spine.

“They told me at that time it was a spider tumour, and it had attached itself to her nervous system ... It had already gone into her head.”

On Oct. 6, they received the official diagnosis and was told she had two to six months to live. Officially, Breanna had glioblastoma multiforme, a grade 4 cancerous spinal tumour.
She was able to take her home for her final days, and Huard says the help and support she received from the community up until her daughter's death that December made a world of difference helping the family cope.

“All her medication was paid for, all her medical supplies, her nursing, PSWs, hospital bed – whatever I needed to keep her home, I got help with,” she says. “I just want to be able to help another kid out there.”

After years of trying to organize an event, she got a call in March from Tannys Laughren, executive director at the Northern Cancer Foundation.
“She called me and said, 'OK, let's do something,' ” Huard said. “I want to do this in honour of Breanna, because I know she would have been right into this ... She was an awesome kid, always happy, always smiling.”

The walk goes from 10 a.m. - noon. There will be a barbecue afterwards and a tour of the cancer centre. Anyone who wants to get involved can go to ncfsudbury.com for information and to print pledge forms. Huard said there's no specific amount they're hoping to raise this year. She just wants to get a successful campaign started that will become an annual event.

“We're going to do it yearly,” she said. “There's a lot of kids around here with cancer, and it's pretty sad. And I know how expensive it can be, especially with all the travel.”