'Small but mighty': How you can help this 4-year-old in her cancer battle

RICHMOND, Va. — September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and one Richmond family is sharing their four-year-old daughter's journey to becoming cancer-free.

Last September, Charlotte Wilson was a healthy 3-year-old, but her life and her family’s lives quickly turned upside down after she was diagnosed with stage four high-risk neuroblastoma—a rare and aggressive childhood cancer.

"I felt tired and sick," said Charlotte.

Charlotte has spent the last year enduring countless hospital visits for surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, scans, blood transfusions and more.

"It's something you never think that's gonna happen to you," explained her mom, Caley. "You hear about these stories, but they seem kind of distant until you're really in it and it happens to your family. The fear is huge from a parent point of view. You don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring."

Charlotte has received care at both the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU and at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City.

She’s now part of a vaccine trial to hopefully reduce the chance of her cancer returning, which is unfortunately common for children with high-risk neuroblastoma.

Her family is putting on a padel tournament at the Padel Plant in Shockoe Bottom this Friday to raise awareness and money for this cancer clinical trial.

"Charlotte is lucky to benefit from this vaccine, which was largely funded by parents putting on fundraising events and getting their community and friends to support them in that way," shared Caley. "Everyone wants to help, and this is what we want to do as our way of paying forward to other families and furthering the research."

If you’d like to take part in the tournament Friday, October 2nd at 6:30 p.m. or make a donation, click here: https://p2p.onecause.com/charlotte-wilson.

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