Little Charlie beats the odds, eight Christmases and counting

Charlie just turned 10, and is a ball of energy!

As difficult as it was to receive a cancer diagnosis, I always said to myself, “Thank God it was me and not my daughter.” So I can only imagine the turmoil Deirdre Carey experienced when she was told her beloved six-month-old Charlie had an extremely rare form of brain and spinal cancer. Worse yet, Charlie was given a 0 – 10 percent chance of survival.

Charlie proved the doctors wrong. Eight years ago, the family received the best Christmas gift ever: Charlie was in remission. Today, he is an irrepressible, healthy boy who loves basketball and playing with his big brother Jay. Deirdre shared her story with me for my book Incurable to Incredible. Here’s a bit of what she had to say:

Handing Charlie over for surgery was one of the most painful experiences of my life. They told us he might not survive the surgery. Here I am placing my six-month-old baby boy in the arms of a doctor, knowing the next time I held him he might not be alive. It was an extensive eight-hour procedure in which they had to remove a piece of his skull to get to the tumor, then reattach it.

 But he came out of it wonderfully. In fact, just hours after the surgery, he was trying to sit up in his bed. One nurse said “We never saw anything like this; this child is an absolute fighter. We had to tie this child to the bed!”

In total, Charlie had 10 surgeries and 21 months of chemotherapy. He was so resilient; he really didn’t know any better. He threw up terribly and literally learned to crawl and walk attached to an IV pole. Nothing slowed him down.

I had days when I didn’t want to get up from the fetal position, but I was raised you had to get up. We never allowed ourselves to say, “Why us?” Attitude is the driving force of every action you take. You can live in a world of doom and gloom or you can rise above it. 

We believed in miracles and power of prayer and held on to that one glimmer of hope. We thought, “If his chances were one in a million, there’s no reason he can’t be the one.” And we had Charlie and his wonderful, fighting spirit. We believe these are the things that carried us through.

Deirdre says she made a promise to God that if Charlie survived, she would do anything in her power to make people believe in miracles. So she wrote the book, Hope, Faith and Charlie to share her family’s experiences. To learn more and purchase it, visit http://www.hopefaithandcharlie.com/.