Hello! My name is Jamie, and Liam is my 13-year-old cancer warrior.

I often say “we” have walked this road for a very long time… but the truth is, it’s his exhausting road. We are just the ones beside him, driving him through every horrible, twisted turn.

Liam’s story began when he was just 9 months old. At a routine well check, I mentioned a newly developed lazy eye. Combined with an unusually rapid increase in his head circumference, it led to an MRI. We were simply looking for an explanation for his eye… but instead, we found something we never expected.

Liam had a brainstem tumor—something completely unrelated to anything we could physically see and completely unexpected.

From that moment on, everything changed. We traveled to Tennessee, where a biopsy confirmed a low-grade glioma. “Low-grade” sounds less threatening, but in the brainstem, any significant growth can be life-threatening. We tried multiple chemotherapy regimens, all of which failed. Eventually, we made the difficult decision to move forward with proton radiation, hoping to destroy the tumor.

And it did.

We were given 6–7 years of stable scans—years filled with laughter, milestones, and a sense of normalcy. He was “in remission “ and everything was ok.

Until September 2025.

Liam began complaining of constant headaches—waking up with them and going to sleep with them. Despite his complaints, he kept going at life like normal. He played baseball. He made good grades. He fought with his brothers. Everything seemed “normal.”

But, after weeks of persistent symptoms, we finally got an appointment for an MRI. I feared his tumor “woke up.” It was worse.

October 9th is a date I will never forget.

Halfway through the scan, the radiologist called to ask about Liam’s history. Red flag number one.
The nurses left his IV in place—something they don’t usually do. Red flag number two.

And then, the doctor—who had no availability for weeks—walked into the MRI recovery room. Red flag number three.

That’s when we knew.

Liam had developed a new tumor. Hemorrhagic. Cystic. Ring-enhancing. I know these terms- I’m a physician assistant in family medicine. I don’t know enough, but yet I knew enough at that moment to be absolutely terrified.

I called Liam’s dad and cried. This was not good.

Liam thought the life flight to Texas Children’s was exciting.

But for us, it marked the beginning of the hardest battle of his life. And the new worst day of our life.

Since October 9, Liam has endured three more brain surgeries and received a diagnosis no family is ever prepared for: stage IV brain cancer- more specifically-HGNET—radiation-induced.

Fatal. Terminal.

And still… he fought.

Radiation again slowed the disease in his brain—ironically, too well—making him ineligible for certain clinical trials. But even as we held onto that small victory, we were given another devastating blow: the cancer had spread to the leptomeninges.

Leptomeningeal disease. LMD. Also fatal. Also terminal.

But Liam hasn’t given up. So neither will we.

We are preparing to begin radiation to his spine, and we are holding onto hope as he enters a clinical trial.

Liam has been fighting since he was 9 months old. He has been a warrior for longer than his little brothers have even been alive. His strength is something most people will never have to find—and yet he carries it with grace and more composure than I can muster every single day.

This cancer does not just affect Liam. It touches his brothers, his family, his friends, his classmates—our entire community and beyond. We love our Facebook friends.

And in the midst of all of this, we have been incredibly blessed. We have witnessed an outpouring of love, support, and prayer that has carried us in ways we never could have imagined. So many people have rallied around Liam, lifting him up and believing alongside us for a miracle.

And for that, we are so very very grateful.