Photo by Virginia Jones.
Mimi Bittick was inspired by her daughter’s experience with a Wilms tumor to raise money to fight pediatric cancer. Here she is pictured with her daughters Grace and Margot.
Mimi Bittick knew she needed to do something as her daughter battled cancer. But when the cancer relapsed, she knew she had to do something big. Just over a year ago, though, she had no idea what the months to come would hold.
Three-year-old Grace had started feeling badly in September 2014. She was lethargic and pale, but doctors couldn’t figure out a diagnosis.
“My gut feeling kept telling me something was really wrong,” Mimi said.
Then on the morning of Oct. 20, Grace woke Mimi up with stomach pain. By that afternoon, they were in a room at Children’s of Alabama surrounded by a team of oncologists. Grace had an 18-cm Wilms tumor the size of an oblong grapefruit on her kidney
“I knew my life would never be the same,” Mimi said looking back. “It was the most out-of-body experience I have ever had.”
Following the diagnosis, seven weeks of chemo shrunk Grace’s tumor to less than half its original size so that it could be removed in December. Rounds of radiation followed, but just when the Bitticks thought Grace was clear of treatment, chapter two of their story began. On April 20, six months after her original diagnosis, doctors found a spot on Grace’s liver in a CT scan, and she had surgery the next day to remove the Wilms relapse.
“They were telling us we had to run the marathon again, harder and faster,” Mimi said.
On a more positive note, the Bitticks learned that Wilms is the only kind of solid pediatric tumor that has a therapy to cure it. Still, Grace underwent another six months of intense chemo, undergoing seven infusions over three days and three nights at a time. At home she took nightly shots to stabilize her white blood cells.
The Bitticks’ journey quickly became bigger than their family, too. During days at Children’s, Mimi found a new “family” of cancer patients and their families.
“You see people whose battles are not being won,” Mimi said. “It’s so epically tragic.”
Now that Grace has received final chemo treatments in September, Mimi is turning her Amazing Grace efforts toward a new goal — raising $1 million to fund research at Children’s in honor of Grace. The campaign will span five years — the amount of time following Grace’s last chemo treatment before she can be declared cancer-free. Grace will be 9 years old then.
With a background in event planning and fundraising, Mimi is assembling a team of friends and plans to create an annual fundraiser event as well as make asks in the community for commitments over the next five years.
Although there are many worthwhile causes at the hospital, Mimi said she is focusing her Amazing Grace campaign on funding the research of Dr. Stuart Cramer’s pediatric lab. Currently, Cramer has implanted tumors — two of them Grace’s — in 55 mice with plans to develop pediatric cancer treatments through them.
“He is doing this in our backyard at UAB,” Mimi said, noting the importance of supporting local pediatric cancer research and in doing so retaining the best doctors at Children’s.
“With Grace’s cancer, it took on a mind of its own,” Mimi said. “It popped back up, and everyone was scratching their heads. We were lucky we had a go-to treatment, but other families don’t have this.”
“This is research we may depend on if Grace’s cancer ever comes back,” Mimi said. “Cancer does not discriminate. I never even thought about Children’s being there, but when you need it, boy are you glad it’s there… This could happen to anyone in an instant.”
Donations can be made to Children’s of Alabama and marked for the Amazing Grace Fund. To follow the Bitticks’ journey, visit the Team Amazing Grace Facebook page.
