Supporters will cheer from highway overpasses and line the road out of Swartz Bay ferry terminal to welcome home Langford’s little Hannah Day on Friday, her 100th day of being cancer free.
“It’s overwhelming; I’m in shock we’re finally here,” said mother Brooke Ervin on Wednesday. The moment is “something we’ve been waiting for, for two years.”
In a Hail Mary last attempt to save the four-year-old from dying with leukemia, Hannah underwent a rare haploidentical transplant, using her mom’s stem cells, on March 19 at B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.
Friday marks the 100th day Hannah will have been free of both leukemia and the original cancer — called rhabdomyosarcoma — she was diagnosed with in 2012.
“This welcoming home is so nice — to see how many people want to see this little girl come home, and stay home, and go to school and have a normal life,” Ervin said. It’s being loosely organized through social media, including the Hope for Hannah Day on Facebook.
Hannah will be considered cancer free on Day 100 because regular blood tests have not revealed abnormalities. On that day she will have her final bone marrow biopsy. Doctors are optimistic. However, results aren’t expected until Monday. That won’t stop the homecoming, but it means her parents can’t breathe easy until Monday.
Ervin expects the family will leave from Tsawwassen at 4 or 5 p.m., which would see the family — including sister Hailey and father Robert Day — arrive at Swartz Bay terminal at 5:35 or 6:35 p.m.
Earlier this year, Hannah was told she was cancer-free and headed home to Langford only to learn hours later a new cancer, leukemia, had been detected. It was caused by the radiation used to kill her original cancer.
Even after tests confirm Hannah is cancer-free, she will have weekly blood tests as well as monthly checkups for leukemia (and four tests a year for the original cancer) for the next two years.
“So life will never really go back to normal,” said Ervin.
If either cancer returns, “there’s nothing more they can do for her. It’s straight to palliative care at Victoria General,” Ervin said.
Hospital is not a scary place for Hannah. It’s familiar. Comfortable. Every time she packs her suitcase for hospital she does so with excitement, meticulously folding her clothes and carefully choosing her favourite toys.
It’s an image that tortures Ervin — the idea that if Hannah has to return to hospital, she will pack with excitement and care, not realizing what lies ahead.
“Those are the nightmares I have.”
Ervin envisions the day she can smile and be in the moment as Hannah does something new or cute or funny. Today, “I look at them as memories” for fear it won’t happen again, Ervin said.
Hannah’s immune system is severely compromised. She remains on 12 antibiotics. People are advised not to touch her and be relatively germ-free in her presence.
