Wheaton mom tells of son's battle with brain cancer in new book
Ellie Ewoldt realizes her book won't be for everyone.
Mothers of children with cancer are the primary audience. But Ewoldt is hopeful others, including long-term caregivers and people facing difficult diagnoses, can find hope in her telling of her son Chase's battle with cancer.
“The audience can be quite varied,” she said. “Some of the people who have said, 'This story spoke to me so deeply,' their particular struggle in no way mirrored my own.”
Ewoldt's book, “Chase Away Cancer,” came out earlier this month, and May is Brain Tumor Awareness Month and National Cancer Research Month. Her story chronicles the Wheaton family's journey with Chase from July 2012, when he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive brain and spinal cancer at age 2.
The journey included grueling cancer therapy every two to three weeks through August 2013, when doctors determined one of only two treatments known to cure Chase's cancer worked.
“It's the idea of what do you have faith in? What do you trust in during the hard times? How are you finding peace?” Ewoldt said. “What I tried to do is close out each chapter with some of the insights we had been learning or ways God has been teaching us.”
While Ewoldt doesn't explicitly argue in the book about the great need for more childhood cancer research funding, she hopes the “shock and awe factor” readers get when they hear what Chase went through will help them better understand how most of the treatment options available today for pediatric cancer patients are dated, and meant for adults.
“I think in some ways the picture of the lack of research may be stronger than if I just said, 'There was a lack of research in this area,'” she said.
The first advance copy of the book was given to an ambulance driver at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, where Chase was hospitalized more often than not for the 14 months after his diagnosis.
Ewoldt said the man later was driving a brain cancer patient whose mother said she didn't know where to turn. He gave her the book, and the mother has since connected with Ewoldt and found comfort in Chase's story.
“I truly feel like that's the heart of the book,” Ewoldt said. “My heart was full when I heard that.”
Ewoldt realizes the book doesn't have a clear ending. Chase is stable, but he's not necessarily in remission. He's in between two eye surgeries that are necessary because he started losing his vision due to the cancer treatments. Soon, he will start taking growth hormones, as he hasn't grown much since being on chemotherapy.
And there's always the risk of the cancer returning, from the hormones, which carry a great risk of secondary cancer, or the small growths that still show on his more recent brain scans.
“How do you give the reader resolution as a cancer patient when you have no resolution yourself?” Ewoldt said. “It was a very heart-searching project.”
But there's hope, and a lot to be thankful for: Chase has fared better than expected.
Ewoldt is looking forward to bringing Chase to book events this summer, including a signing at Anderson's Book Store in Naperville at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 4. She hopes she'll be able to speak more about the need for more research then.
“I'm not even doing it for Chase, but for kids like Chase,” she said. “Since I started writing the book, I can't even tell you how many kids have passed away in our Lurie Children's circle.”
Chase, now 6, is excited, too. Representatives from Tyndale House Publishers came to the Ewoldts' home to deliver final copies of the book, and Chase was jumping up and down when they put one in his hands, saying, “It's my book! It's my book!”
“He's pretty dead sure he wrote it,” Ewoldt said with a laugh, “and I'm OK with that.”