Meet Logan

“Logan is a kid who gets everyone’s attention, and he doesn’t even have to try,” says his mom. He just has a certain something that draws people to him.

When Logan was 6 years old, he started having headaches. At first, he would have one every few weeks, but soon he was having headaches several times a day. After repeated trips to the emergency room, doctors ordered an MRI. The scan revealed a tumor in Logan’s brain.

Logan was transported by air to a children’s hospital for surgery, where Logan’s worried family was warned of the possible outcomes. “What they told me made me sick to my stomach,” says his mother. “They said he could be paralyzed on the right side or that he could go blind.”

Fortunately, Logan came out of surgery without any lasting damage. But even so, the crisis wasn’t over. The tumor was malignant, a type known as ependymoma.

Logan needed intensive post-surgery treatment to improve his chances of survival. The best place for him to get this life-saving treatment was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude has the largest pediatric brain tumor research program in the country and the world’s best survival rates.

At St. Jude, Logan received 33 radiation therapy treatments over the course of six weeks. His mom remains proud of how brave her little boy was. “I was the one crying,” she remembers.

The wide-ranging support of his treatment team at St. Jude helped Logan cope. “The Child Life Specialists worked with him every time he got an IV,” his mom says. “He loved his physical therapy. They let him play basketball every time they got done with a session.”

The St. Jude school helped Logan keep up with his peers during cancer treatment. And Logan picked up a new hobby: puzzles. “He started with the puzzles that were 30 or 40 pieces,” says his mom, “and by the end of his treatment, he was doing the ones that had 100 pieces. His motor skills were excellent.”

“I didn’t worry at all when I was at St. Jude,” she continues. “I knew he was going to get better, and I didn’t have to worry about having to take care of everything because St. Jude helped.”

In fact, families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live.

Today, Logan is in the second grade but doing math at a third-grade level. He is signed up for baseball this year and loves his pet Chihuahua, Jo Jo. His mom says, “He’s all you could ever want for a son.”

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