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Welcome to Nathan's Story

This story is here to tell you about Nathan's Story and his courage and to show you how one young boy helped to make a BIG impact on childhood cancers with your donations.

Nathan's Story is a 501c3 non-profit, and a 100% volunteer organization.

We are dedicated to " Making a Difference," for children with cancer.

At Nathan"s Story we wanted you to understand the difficulties of what happens when a family is faced with this life threatening disease called cancer. So many families have had to face this heart wrenching reality of being diagnosed with cancer, and as you read Nathans Story you will see his strength and that he was able to see through his own difficulties and take a look at the bigger picture about others facing cancer. Even though Nathan had been diagnosed with Osteosarcoma (bone cancer)twice, he had been encouraged to help others with cancer. This is how this organization came into existence. His hope was and ours is, that you will allow others with cancer to see the good that can come from people, coming together to fight this terrible disease.


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Nathan's Story

Nathan's story of one boys courage to fight for others with cancer.

My son's name is Nathan, and this is his story that started 2010 (from diary entries).... 

Nathan has always been a strong healthy active child. He was practicing at soccer one day, when his leg started to bother him. He took a break on the bench and as he was rubbing his leg he came across a bump just below his knee. As most kids, Nathan didn't pay much attention to this at the time. In fact he didn't even tell anyone so it went unnoticed. This took place back in August of 2010. Nathan went on to play the rest of the season out as defense for his championship team. It was not until the middle of October that he came to me to show me this "bump" he had on his leg. This bump was just below his knee. We had no idea he had this bump since August so I said to him, "Let's keep an eye on it and see what it does. You have lots of bumps and bruises, that's what lil boys get from playing so hard." As time went on the "bump" never bruised nor showed any signs of going away eventually it started to become more painful and uncomfortable and started to bother Nathan's knee. I decided enough time had gone by so I made him an appointment. The appointment was on November 18, 2010 at 9:00am. That morning I figured he was going to have some x-rays. I didn't want to have to make two trips to town. We were able to get in for the x-ray by 10am and that way I could have him back to school around 10:30am. I received a phone call by 11:00am, my heart sunk as they told me to take him to the Emergency Oncology Department. They had already set up an appointment at A.I. DuPont Hospital.....


Nathan was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) on Nov. 19, 2010. He started chemotherapy at AI DuPont on Thanksgiving of 2010 and has been handling it like a trooper. Our family has been spending endless day and hours at DuPont . This has been very difficult on our family. We have another son who is in his senior year of High School. Being a senior and dealing with the stress of what you will do once you graduate is already enough of a challenge, but for him having to cope with his little brother being diagnosed with cancer was what topped all of that... He has also been feeling alone because of all the time we spend up in the hospital with Nathan's chemo treatments. Nathan's chemo was scheduled as an in-patient treatment. When everything went according to plan it is almost tolerable. As we have all learned through this process, nothing goes according to plan. Nathan can would get sick at any given moment and end up back at the hospital in moments. Nathan could not attend school for fear of getting sick. Not only that, but his treatments took up all of his time. When he was not getting chemo he was fighting to keep his blood counts up high enough just to have a good day. Nathan was able to have a friend over to keep him company or play, but that did not happen very often. There has been ups and downs in our family as we have dealt with this nightmare of a situation, but we are a tight family and we have managed to overcome all the hurtles that have tried to impair us.


The first week in February of 2011 Nathan underwent surgery on his leg to remove the tumor. This operation consisted of part of his Tibia being removed, where the Osteosarcoma was located. They also removed some of his thigh for connection purposes and replaced it with a prosthesis, taking their place which includes the knee joint. This sounds terrifying for anyone to go through, but Nathan at age 9 only heard one thing. What he heard was that he would never be able to play soccer again. Nathan is very proud of the awards he earned during his time playing soccer and is always eager to tell you stories about his fantastic soccer maneuvers. He has one championship trophy and three participant medals. Nathan continued back into high dose chemo until the end of July 2012 and was making a great recovery and comeback still participating in physical therapy three times a week at the hospital where he was also very involved in different events to help raise monies for the foundation at the hospital; he never turns down an opportunity to help out.


                                 nathan


Nathan had been pulled out of school for the 2010-2011 year to undergo the treatments and recover from the surgery, and even with all he is going through would like to help other people who have cancer. He has joined "The American Cancer Society's, Relay for Life" as a team member of Going for the Gold, Nathan went on to do so well that he took the award for the most individual raised at the relay. Nathan's goal in life has always been to make sure everyone was having a good day. He has had his own problems as every child does growing up but his problems never come first. He has always set his own problems aside and takes the time to make sure everyone else is "OK", as long as they are having a "good day" then he can too. Nathan had an opportunity to return part time to school, the 5th grade and as time went on he became winded and noticed he was not able to participate in physical activity as well as he had been. He was not able to do the physical activity he'd been doing consistently for some time. After many more tests and different departments the problem finally showed it's face, the cancer had returned. The tests showed cancer in his right lung and surgery was scheduled and the tumor was removed. Nathan's Doctor's still had to place his port for chemo, and while there the Doctor checked the left lung as well. He had a gut feeling and eventually his fear would prove to be correct. Nathan was diagnosed with metastatic bi-lateral lung cancer. This means the hard tumor bone cancer was growing in his lungs, it is like having stones in your lungs. This changed the chemo plan as the cancer was aggressive and resisting treatment he had already underwent. Nathan went back into chemo again. For us only to hear partly through the course that the chemo was proving to have hardship on his organs and in order to "possibly" give Nathan a chance at a normal life without organ transplants we had to stop treatment. We had to decide between his organs and the cancer. Giving that he had the surgery and Doctor felt comfortable that he had gotten all that was to be found at the time, we stopped the chemo to save his organs. When Nathan heard he had cancer again, his reply was like no other. Nathan insisted there had to be a change and asked if we could be part of that change. If we could start an organization to help children and families and research, he wanted to be a help in every area he could help. So our journey began to become Nathans Story Childhood Cancer Organization. It took some time but with the help of a friends and her boss, a lawyers office. Her boss insisted that he would help only if he could as his gift to the organization. We have become Nathans dream, Nathan's Story Childhood Cancer Organization, we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit for childhood cancer.


Nathan continued his hard work in school maintaining high honors, a 4.3 GPA and focusing on his health and getting stronger; he played varsity Golf with his local high school getting his varsity letter and pin as a freshman. From an invite from a fellow osteosarcoma warrior and a great friend Nathan joined a Sled Hockey team Delaware Sled Snipers and going to the championships with them several times and bringing home to the cup. We pulled him out of public school due to it not being a great fit and started him on a full home school program where he would attend private home-school classes, which he absolutely enjoyed to no end and worked very hard on being a kids his own age. December of 2016 we went for a routine oncology follow up appointment and found Nathan labs were at an all time low, he had minimal platelets, red blood cells and his whites were low as well, Dr was in hopes this was just a virus and we monitored for 4 weeks when it showed no signed of recouping doctor and I (Mom) agreed we needed a bone marrow biopsies done something wasn't right.

From those bone marrow biopsies Nathan would be diagnosed in 2017 with a secondary cancer known as Therapy-Related Myelodysplastic Syndrome (t-MDS), in Nathan's case this would be a blood cancer related to Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). This cancer came from two of his earlier high dose chemo-therapy treatments, Cysplatin being from his original diagnosis in 2010 and Ifosomide bring from his relapse with Osteosarcoma in 2012. These are not your common chemo-therapies that cause secondary cancers, although they run the risk as do many of them. This secondary cancer proved to be extremely difficult to treat and deal with, his Dr's were in contact with a multitude of Dr's from across the United States and the treatments just were not there for Nathan, who had already been exposed to a lot of high dose chemo-therapy treatments to begin with, his organs were of big concern and he was in need of an Bone Marrow Transplant, we needed to get him to that point which was his only hope of beating it all together and surviving. Nathan's chemotherapy treatments would vary from one to the other, each one being able to show some success from first rounds, and if not we moved onto another and nothing was working, we needed to gain control of the cancer cells before they evolved. Nathan was put into studies to help make that happen. The doctors came up with a cocktail that was a long shot but worth the try and to all our surprise this would put Nathan into remission (words we had never heard through all of this starting in 2010), we needed to get into the transplant ASAP. Through the course of time Nathan was going through all his chemo-therapy treatments, the search was on for his bone marrow donor. Doctors exhausted all the resources within the United States and extended out to the world...problem was Nathan had a ethnic gene in him that was preventing a donor from being found, it came that there was no donor to be found for Nathan worldwide. Bone marrow registries/donors for all ethnic population are extremely low and in desperate need of registrants/donors. We were all carefully tested and compared and none of us were a match they needed, Nathan's father had the closest numbers and he was to be used as a last resort...We found ourselves in that exact situation that we needed to go to our only hope and our last resort and use Nathan's father, he was only a partial match and a HAPLO BMT would have to be done, this ran great risks of other complications, but the scales were being weighed and the opportunity was NOW, and so we proceeded.

                                 nathan


Nathan's transplant March 2017 was a full success, spending months in the hospital finally being able to go home to recover going back and forth to the hospital 3 times a week for testing, transfusions and whatever else he needed through this time, he dealt with Graft vs. Host Disease, BK HD virus, nephropathy, and the list goes on, some going away after time and some staying around making life difficult on a daily basis...little by little he resumed some daily activities, even getting back into his home-school classes that fall for his junior year and that alone made him a very happy boy. Nathan thoroughly enjoyed classes, his teachers at MT. Sophia Academy DE, and the mass amount of friends he made there, this was a great time for him even with everything going on with his health. Just as Nathan started to regain life as he should have again cancer would prove to be relentless. Nathan started going backwards at a rapid rate the end of October 2017, back out of classes again and at the hospital almost everyday needing transfusions eventually Nathan became transfusion dependent for platelets and red cells, even needing bags of plasma to help out, a bone marrow biopsy would prove Nathan had again relapsed diagnosed now with relapsed t-MDS, odds had just stacked against Nathan, but no one gave up hope. He was given vitamin K to aide in this time and to no prevail he just continued to be transfusion dependent, developing a severe back pain in his lower back around Christmas time that nothing would ease, again leading to another bone marrow biopsy that would result in our worse nightmare, Nathan had now been diagnosed with his third cancer and the worse possible situation t-AML. The Dr phoned the evening of January 4th giving us this devastating news but had a plan, the next day instead of our original plans we were coming in to start a new high dose chemo treatment to battle the t- AML, no one was giving up on our boy. It was bitter cold that morning and had been for about a week now so his father took off to help me so he wasn't exposed to the cold any longer then need be, we got Nathan to his appointment they drew labs, we had a meeting about the new treatment and again going on to a study so they could do this, got everything in line to begin only receive the worst possible news we ever could on top of everything else...

Nathan's labs showed he was in total renal failure, in less then a day in a half from great levels that Wednesday to total renal failure that morning of Friday January 5, 2018. With the aggressive t-AML diagnosis and full renal failure there was no more for Nathan, he was totally ready to continue his fight but his young body just couldn't take no more; seven in a half years of fighting cancer starting at age 9; Nathan peacefully passed away at age 16 on January 9, 2018... a day etched in our minds forever.

Our mission at Nathan's Story Childhood Cancer Organization, is to help other children and families where they need it most, internally; bringing smiles to these children and their families is extremely important, as most children spend countless days/admissions in the hospital getting treatments and so on. We'd love to be able to help one day with expenses, bills (yes very different from typical expenses), needs: for the child going through the struggles, as well as helping aid in donating towards research to better our children's chances of surviving long term with less side effects from the chemo-therapies that are offered now. Childhood cancer is the number one killer in our children today, with majority of the treatments being 20-30 yrs old and stemming from adult chemo-therapies at a much higher dose, we need to be able to offer our children something more hopeful and positive. When the children are done with their treatments, their fight is not over, most children will undergo some sort of major illness/side effect from their treatments from the least life threatening like infertility to more severe like heart failure, organ failure, transplants, secondary cancers, and etc.. Nathan's Story C.C.O. wants to help make that difference. There are many opportunities for research but the funds are seriously lacking, the biggest donors and supporters are those who have been stricken by the disease itself and have learned as we did, first hand how much help childhood cancer needs to give our children a better chance to not only beat the disease but to be able to live a full and fun filled life afterwards.

Although Nathan's not here with us now we will continue to do Nathan's work and MAKE A DIFFERENCE where we can to help change how children diagnosed with cancer will be treated, with hopes to see new updated treatment options becoming available one day, ones not so toxic; ones that give the children a better chance and hope for a new tomorrow. Nathan is a gift that will keep on giving...

                                 nathan


With your help, determination and donations we can help make that difference!!!.


So won't you please join in on our mission and help us "Make a Difference" for our children fighting childhood cancer and to honor those who have earned their wings too early. Help our children see another tomorrow. As Nathan would say,

"One child diagnosed is one too many"
~ Nathan Silpath 2001-2018~
                                           
 
                                                                        
Please help Nathan's Story support this cause by donating to Childhood Cancer
 
 
Special thanks to Kim and Jeff Payne for the original write-up of Nathan's story prior to Nathan's surgery. Since then Nathan's Story has been updated by Kim Silpath (Nathan's Mother) and Kathy Florent Marketing SEO Kent County, Chestertown Maryland (MD)

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About Nathan

Nathan was a typically smart child who loved to have fun.

Nathan was a lot like most boys of his age. He loved soccer and video games and Nascar. His favorite Nascar driver was Jimmy Johnson.

Nathan also like to spend his time building legos. He had completed a vast amount of projects in his down time, even though they had become an expensive hobby.

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Help keep Nathan's dream alive, "Help other children with cancer."

Nathan shared his story with the world, wont you share it too.

Nathan had been such a trooper. Even with all he had been through he still wanted to help other people that have cancer. His courage was commendable and his strength was amazing. Please join us in making his memory shine. He used to watch his ticker on his donation page each day to see if anyone had donated, because he knew what the money could do for the children with cancer. Nathan's unselfish act of raising funds for other children, families, and research will never be forgotten. The funds that are raised go towards helping childhood cancer patients, and your donation can do so much to help. Even if each person that hears of Nathan's mission only donated one dollar, we could make a huge impact in this fight to save lives. This can be a truly amazing gift in the memory of a young boy who had been through so much and had such a great dream. One day we pray there will be a cure and no parent nor child will ever have to hear those horrifying words; "Your child/you have cancer."
Thank you for taking the time to read and support this important mission.

"It's not about me anymore mom, we have to help other children with cancer."
~Nathan Silpath 2001-2018~

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This page was designed by Kathy Florent of Chestertown Maryland. Her design SEO and marketing stratagies have helped to make this web site possible.