Halsten Loomis was the kid who was always happy. He smiled through the hard things & tried to find the good in every situation. He loved his family fiercely & had a heart full of faith & trust.
Halsten was first diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma in 2013, just about a month before he turned 2 years old. Prior to his diagnosis, he was vomiting sporadically for a few months, with the frequency slowly increasing.
He had five craniotomies, along with multiple other surgeries, around 65 rounds of radiation, countless MRI’s, chemotherapy, hospitalizations, etc. We have always had a financial hardship on the family budget, because it’s been a pretty constant expense for 10 years now. Cancer changes everything. You can’t go through multiple rounds with incurable cancer & not have it change your family life.
Halsten was running out of treatment options, so we moved forward with a clinical trial that required frequent travel from where we live to Augusta, GA; so our travel budget, etc. became a huge expense. We didn’t know if the trial would work, so we truly didn’t know how much time we had left with him. His cancer was growing & had spread, with many new growths seen in his last MRI’s. The chemo regimen he was previously on did not work. We found out after a few months that the trial meds didn’t work either.
We are heartbroken to share that Halsten passed away at the end of August. He fought for a long time & while his spirit remained strong, his body simply couldn’t continue on. He will be forever missed in our family & we look forward to the day we each will be reunited with him. His beautiful presence continues on with us each day & we feel blessed beyond words to have had as much time with him in our family here on earth.
**We are sending all of our love to the Loomis family during this difficult time. Thank you for allowing us to share his story. Halsten’s Support Page**
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