CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – One little girl’s determination has sparked many community members to open their parking lots and wallets to help her sell lemonade.
Tricia Evans, along with her husband Garrett Evans, a helicopter mechanic at Fort Campbell, has two children: daughter Makenzy, who’s 8, and son Gannon, who is 5 and has cancer.
When Makenzy learned her little brother needed substantial funding to get cancer treatment, she asked her mother if she could sell lemonade to help raise money.
Raising money for a cause through lemonade wasn’t new to Makenzy. One time, her mom said, “Makenzy wanted an LOL doll, and I told her she would have to find a way to raise the money for it.”
This time, the lemonade stand is for her little brother.
(Contributed by Tricia Evans)
Difficult diagnosis
Tricia said it was just a short time ago her family found out Gannon more than likely had cancer. “My son was born in Clarksville, and we have been here for seven years,” she said. Just two years ago, when Gannon was about 3, he began to display stroke-like symptoms.
Tricia said Gannon was diagnosed at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital with cerebral cavernous venous malformations, which are lesions on his brain. “If you have ever seen someone with a strawberry type of birthmark on their face, that’s what it is like in his brain,” she said. “There are like 20 different spots. The blood vessels are just so entangled they are engorged. Sometimes they can pop and cause bleeding out of nowhere,” she said.
Last year, Gannon began to have seizures. Tricia said his doctors at Vanderbilt did an MRI and discovered a tumor in his brain.
“It was a 10 mm glioma,” she said. “On the top of his brain stem it attaches to the occipital lobe in the back of his head.”
Tricia said because of where it’s at, and due to other neurological conditions, that cause hemorrhaging, Gannon has been to Vanderbilt, Duke, Centennial and University of Michigan, St. Jude just to name a few.
“There is nobody who will touch his tumor – they won’t even biopsy it. Without a biopsy, we don’t even know 100 percent that that’s what it is,” she said. However, diagnostic imaging did indicate it was cancerous.
Hope with new clinical trial
With the way his condition is deteriorating, Tricia said they found hope at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, through their Pediatric Brain Tumor Clinic.
While it’s a clinical trial for cases of inoperable cancer, and it consists of noninvasive procedures, Tricia said it’s the only hope they had. Unfortunately, although the couple have Tricare, they have to come up with a cost up front for her son to receive treatment.
Tricia said the Army as well as the hospital in Boston has assisted her to raise a certain amount through grants and financial assistance, but they have thousands they will have to raise on their own.
Friday, Honeycutt Realtors in Clarksville allowed the family to set up a lemonade stand, and Tricia said they raised $900 more.
She said Gannon gets out too and helps sell lemonade.
“He will run up to everyone to ask them if they want lemonade and then give them a big hug and let them go about their day,” she said. “Or he will tell them about his tumor or about his hospital stay, he loves everyone.”
How to help
There are many other lemonade sales planned in the future.
The next events are Sunday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Kelly’s Big Burger, 405 N. Riverside Drive, and on Tuesday, Sept. 13, from noon to 6 p.m. at Kelly’s.
On Sunday, Oct. 2, starting at 4 p.m., Wagon Wheel Restaurant is hosting a benefit barbecue dinner for Gannon.
Tricia said she will continue to post the family’s lemonade events and other fundraisers on the Facebook page Gannon’s Story.
She’s proud of her daughter for doing what she can.
“I asked Makenzy why she wanted to do a stand to help her brother, and she said, ‘Because I want to help him feel better, and I’m a big sister that’s my job.'”