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Family hopes pet parade will help young cancer patient smile
Jennifer Holton reports
ODESSA, Fla. - 2020 was a hard year for most of us, but for Tammy Miller and her son David, there’s only one way to describe it.
"It’s been hell," Tammy said.
Eight-year-old David now has just weeks to live.
"It’s been awful, it’s been really, really awful," Tammy continued.
The Pasco County boy was diagnosed a year and a half ago with Wilms Tumor Stage IV, which they found in his kidney. By the time they caught it, it had already spread to other parts of his body.
David soon began chemotherapy.
"He had 46 weeks of chemo, 12 rounds of radiation – he ended in October and his scans, just after he rang the bell, on October 19, it came back that he had more tumors, and more growth," Tammy explained.
A seven-week clinical trial in Cincinnati didn’t work. And then on January 26, came the worst news of all.
"He’s home on hospice," she said. "Doctors said a week to two weeks left."
How he wants to spend it, she says, involves a little help from the community.
"He wants to have a dog parade," Tammy said. "We’ve done a car parade, a motorcycle parade, so we’re having a dog parade Saturday at 2 o’clock."
Tammy and the family are inviting the community to pound the pavement with their pups this weekend. The parade will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday in their Odessa neighborhood, and she wants the community to know that it would mean the world to him.
"And it’d mean the world to us," she added, "just to see that smile on his face."
If you’re interested in taking part in the pet parade this Saturday, the event begins at 2 p.m. on Jacobson Drive in Odessa. Cars will meet at the park down the street.