By Sanford Children's Hospital

Evan Todd spent the summer of 2014 like any 4-year-old boy would - running around, playing with friends and family. Then, in August, he began complaining about hip pain and was limping around. One short month later, Evan was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma.

When Evan began limping and complaining of hip pain, his family took him into the doctor. Tests showed high levels of inflammation and fluid in his hip, so he was told to take Tylenol and rest up. Unfortunately, that wasn’t doing the trick. They took him back in and further testing showed an abnormality in his bone marrow and even more inflammation. Doctors ordered an MRI, CT scan, and ultrasound, thinking it was a bone infection. Unfortunately, it was something much worse.

Evan had a mass on one of his kidneys that was intertwined in his spleen. Evan endured a year of chemotherapy, which reduced the size of his tumor from a pancake to an egg, allowing doctors to remove much of the tumor. He then underwent a bone marrow transplant and has since started going back to school and enjoying being “normal” as much as possible.

Unfortunately after a very short remission period, in June of 2016, Evan’s cancer came back with a vengeance. After a long, hard fight, Evan earned his angel wings on October 4, 2017, at only 8 years old

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