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Mom noticed her toddler was acting strange. Days Later, She... - PEOPLE 8225670622173

When Virginia mom Nicole Dodge noticed that her daughter, now 2, was moving her arm in an unusual way, she never imagined she would hear the diagnosis a few days later.

Natalie, the youngest of the five children, only used the lower half of her arm. She told PEOPLE, "I thought I had gone crazy."

Dodge, initially thinking it was a shoulder injury in Natalie, who at the time was 15 months, sent a video to her husband Andrew who is a chiropractor and to her sister's husband and wife who are both physical therapy.

"We all came up with the conclusion that it might be a partial dislocation, and it would probably work itself out if it was given a weekend," she recalls. "It was Friday afternoon and it was 2022. Hospitals still had COVID protocols that were stricter. At that point, my only option was to go to ER. She wasn't even wailing so that seemed extreme."

Dodge said that Natalie had not changed by Sunday. She was going to wait until Monday before taking her daughter to the orthopedist.

Dodge remembers thinking, "Clearly something is wrong," Dodge recalls. "I took my other four children to my mother in law's house, and took Natalie straight into the pediatric ER."

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After spending hours in the ER, the doctors decided to keep Natalie overnight so that they could take an MRI the next morning. They told me they didn't like how the bone looked in the x-ray, that it looked really fragile and that this could have been caused anything from nutrient deficiency like minerals and vitamin to cancer.

"They said cancer, but they said it in such a casual way that I didn’t think that was the reason. I thought that it was more that they were just telling me all the possibilities," she recalls.

Dodge and her daughter were admitted to the hospital that night. They had to remain in isolation because Natalie tested positive for COVID, even though she was asymptomatic. They were informed later that night that their MRI had been cancelled as doctors would instead be performing a differential diagnosis.

"We have an extremely long list of possible things that could be wrong for your daughter. We have to go down the list one-by-one and sort of move things away." The doctors explained to Dodge that the top two items on the list were both cancers. "I was like 'What? '" "I felt like the rug had been ripped from under me."

They explained to me that a urine test and a blood sample that they would do first thing in morning could confirm or rule out either of those items. The urine test confirmed Natalie's increased levels of Catecholamines, and it was decided that an MRI would be prudent to do that afternoon.

Ashley Parker Photography

"We had a CT scan and a biopsy." Within the first 24 hour period of being in the hospital, we had a general understanding that it was probably cancer. We knew about four days into the hospital that it was a neuroblastoma but we did not know how bad it would be at that time.

Dodge and her husband Andrew waited with Natalie at home for the results of the biopsy while it was being sent to a laboratory. The couple's situation was made even more stressful by the fact that they had just closed on their new home two weeks prior to Natalie's diagnosis.

"When we returned home from the hospital, it took us about 24 hours to get back to our old home. Within 48 hours after we returned home, our family and friends knew we had been diagnosed with cancer. They lined up pickup trucks in our driveway and began to collect the boxes and other items we hadn't packed yet. "They moved us into our home," she tells PEOPLE as she begins to cry.

The Dodges received the results of Natalie's biopsy four days later. It was high-risk or stage 4 neuroblastoma. It's MYCN-amplified, meaning that her cancer type grows at 10 times faster than regular neuroblastoma."

"It was the worst possible prognosis we could have received," says Dodge. "I lost it. We both went to our bedrooms and cried. It was horrible. "We felt there was no hope at all."

Dodge says that the oncologist told them that Natalie's best chance for survival was 50%, even if they were to try and get into a trial. "We could either go through the two years of treatments and she would live, or we could do two years of treatments and she would die."

L: Caption . PHOTO: Nicole Dodge

R: Caption . PHOTO: Nicole Dodge

Dodge says, "We felt that the best thing we could do for her is to give her a quality of life during whatever remaining days or month we had with her." "We thought we would be doing palliative medicine. We thought we would do low-dose chemotherapy to keep her as comfortable and safe as possible. We wanted to take to Disney World to see the beach and Disney World because she had never been. We were ready to spend as many happy days as possible with her."

Dodge says that the car ride from their next oncology visit was "the worst hour of my life."

How are we going have this conversation with the doctor about how we can help our child to die in a respectable way? She recalls her thoughts. "We were silent for the entire car trip." It was horrible."

When the Dodges arrived at Natalie's appointment everything changed.

"Our doctor came in and told us that I had some great news. She said, "I just got off the telephone with St. Jude. I want you to know that in the five years I've worked at this hospital, I have probably tried to get about a dozen patients to come with them. I've been rejected every single time, but within 90 seconds on the phone they verbally accepted me and they want me there on Monday. "And this was on a Friday."

Nicole Dodge

Dodge tells PEOPLE that "our whole world changed in a blink of an eye once again." "I was like 'Well, what is at St. Jude which is not elsewhere?' She said, "They are running research at St. Jude. Their survival rate is more than 80 percent." I looked at my wife and said, "We have to leave." "

In less than a week, Dodge and her child traveled more than 700 miles to Memphis in Tennessee, where they spent over 10 months receiving treatment at St. Jude's.

The doctors determined that Natalie's cancer metastasized when they arrived at the hospital. This means it had spread to other parts of the body. The primary tumor was located in her left glandular and it spread through her lymph nodes. There was no part of her body that remained untouched.

"The secondary tumour was in her left hand. It was the largest second tumor site in her body. She stopped moving her left arm because the tumor had taken over so many bones that it was painful to move. "But she also had tumors on her pelvis, her legs, her wrists, both arms, her skull and her spine. It was all over her, her bone marrow.

L: Caption . PHOTO: Nicole Dodge

R: Caption . PHOTO: Nicole Dodge

"I look back, and I wonder how we didn't know?" " Dodge describes the pain her daughter was experiencing. "The cancer is growing very quickly. When we were diagnosed in the first hospital, her blood work looked normal. She seemed to be a healthy person. When we arrived at St. Jude two weeks later, her blood work was neutropenic. This means that her immune system had been so badly attacked by cancer cells, that it was not even functioning.

Natalie's mom told PEOPLE that during Natalie's stay at St. Jude: "Everything you know about cancer treatments, Natalie received some of it."

"She received five rounds very high-dose chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. She had a resection to remove the tumour," she says. "She had two bone-marrow transplants using her own stem cells. She then had 13 rounds radiation."

Dodge said that Natalie was in the final third of her treatment as of early March: immunotherapy. "Natalie is on daily injections and oral medication, and we visit St. Jude every month for an inpatient treatment where they administer immunotherapy."

After the toddler's five rounds of chemotherapy, Dodge said that her little girl had been declared "having no signs of disease" and "continued with clear scans."

"It is truly, truly amazing," she says. "I've seen other protocols at hospitals around the globe, but I haven't seen as many kids with NED status as early in treatment at St. Jude as I've seen elsewhere. Jude."

Dodge thanks her family, community and friends for their support and for keeping Natalie in mind during this difficult journey. She says that sharing Natalie’s story on social networks has been "therapeutic" and reminds her of how far they have come.

Dodge says that making these videos was therapeutic for her, especially when she was sick and we were trapped in this small room. "They were some of the darkest times of my life." It helped me to remember how far we'd come and to be grateful that I was stuck with this little girl, who was still alive.

Mom noticed her toddler was acting strange. Days Later, She… – PEOPLE 8225670622173 When Virginia mom Nicole Dodge noticed that her daughter, now 2,...

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