Eight-year-old Sadie Whitfield loves doing things for others and giving things to other people – sometimes her own things.
“She’s just a very loving child,” said her mother, Annie Laura. “She’s very loving, very sassy. That’s where she gets her name from, Sassy Sadie.”
One summer day, when she was seven, Sadie ran into a door at home and gave herself a concussion. It was a Friday. She needed “brain rest,” which is what her primary care physician called it, but is next to impossible for a seven-year-old.
Over the next few days, Sadie became disoriented and sick. She threw up and ran a high fever. By the following Wednesday, she was in the emergency room before being admitted to the hospital for a battery of tests. After an interminable wait over the July Fourth holiday weekend, the family got the answer they didn’t want.
Doctors diagnosed Sadie with Leukemia on July 5, 2022.
After her initial treatment in Georgia, the family moved Sadie’s treatment closer to home in Greenville at Prisma Health BI-LO Charities Children’s Cancer Center. Treatment has consisted of rounds of chemotherapy and frequent spinal draws to examine her blood cells.
“Sadie likes to dance. She loves music, she loves art, everything. One day we had the whole nursing and medical staff in our room dancing,” Annie said. “Even one of our doctors promised Sadie she’d come back and dance with her. And before she left her shift that night, she came back and danced with her.”
“I want Sadie to understand how blessed she is, and how fortunate she is that we have people who love her. And who want to see her succeed and beat her cancer,” Annie said.
Annie urges others to reach out to Clement’s Kindness for support. “Just make that initial contact. Send that text or phone call or email. They will respond,” she said. “Communication is very much the key into receiving the help, or even just an ear to listen, or to talk to you about things, or to connect you to other people who are going through a similar situation. Because not all cancers are the same.”
And like no two cancers are the same, no two kids are the same. Just like no child is quite like Sadie.
