SAN ANTONO – September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and with the public health crisis placing restrictions on the number of visitors children can have, hospital staff say smiles, joy and laughter are what they truly need the most.
So, a nonprofit organization is hard at work making sure that joy routinely is being delivered.
Pammy Kramer, mother of Maddie Kramer, is the co-founder of Dancing While Cancering. At 2 and a half years old, her daughter Maddie was diagnosed with the rare cancer ATRT, a primary central nervous system tumor that usually begins in the brain or spinal cord. It started a difficult journey for the Kramer family.
“She was full of energy, she was spunky. She had curly hair. She loved to sing and dance. She loved to play,” Pammy Kramer said. “In the early days of her cancer journey, obviously they were very dark days. And that was my big concern is like, will she be Mattie again?”
Maddie lost her battle with cancer in Jan. 2018. But Pammy said they didn’t let the pain of her death keep them from giving back what Maddie gave them. Her parents founded Dancing While Cancering, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing joy to pediatric cancer patients through simple “smile packs”.
“We were very blessed. And she was able to continue to sing and dance and play for many moments during her eight-and-a-half-month battle with cancer,” Kramer said. “It was just a no brainer on what to do. We knew that a mission of bringing joy was so in line with what she did during her journey, that we knew that would be the mission and then it just went from there.”
The mission has since been brought to Methodist Children’s Hospital, and officials there say the smile packs have made a huge impact.
“The backpacks are filled with age-appropriate toys and decorations and just different things to bring smiles and joy to families that are in-patient in the hospital,” Jenna Painter, child life specialist with Methodist Children’s Hospital said.
Pammy said they are coming up on three years since they’ve created the nonprofit and that it is hard to forget their last moment with Maddie.
“We were looking out, and looked on to another building that had pictures of it, like people put up pictures in their windows for the kids in the hospital to look out and see what is amazing. And there was one picture of a big sun and she was asking about it. She was asking about the sun. So, yeah, we continue to shine her light,” she said.