Aleppo family raising awareness about boy’s rare tumor
Bonnie Jordan of Aleppo stands next to her son, Dallas Cunningham, 19, as he holds a picture of his brother, Max Cunningham, 13, who died May 24, 2015, of a rare childhood brain tumor.
Max Cunningham
ALEPPO – When Bonnie Jordan’s 12-year-old son started to vomit in the summer of 2014, she thought he had the flu. But Max Cunningham died 10 months later in May from a rare childhood brain tumor known as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.
Just before the first anniversary of his death, the Aleppo Township woman wants to donate money to UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where Max was treated, to be used for research on the cancer that took her son’s life.
“I don’t think there’s enough awareness about this childhood cancer,” she said. “Hopefully, they’ll be able to find a cure for it.”
To raise money to donate to the hospital in Max’s name, Bonnie and her sister, Teri Jordan, are holding a spaghetti dinner and Chinese auction from noon to 4 p.m. April 3 at Center Township fire hall in Rogersville. Tickets for adults are $8 and tickets for children 12 and younger are $5, which can be purchased at the door.
“Spaghetti was Max’s favorite meal,” Teri said.
Max was diagnosed in July 2014, after about a month of vomiting because, they later learned, the tumor was making him nauseous. The doctors at Children’s Hospital found the tumor and told Max and his family they couldn’t remove it.
“I thought that no matter what I did, I was going to lose my son,” Bonnie said. “We were going to fight the best we could, but with the type of cancer he had, the odds of surviving were very low.”
Max, a seventh-grader in the West Greene School District, loved school and was a straight-A student, his family said. But when he started radiation and chemotherapy at the hospital, he had to stop attending classes.
Bonnie said that one of only two times Max cried during his illness was when he heard the school bus go by one morning and he knew he wouldn’t be getting on it.
“He turned over and cried himself back to sleep,” Bonnie said.
The other time he cried was when doctors told him he had six weeks left to live.
“He said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to die,'” Bonnie recalled.
Max wanted to become a mechanical engineer and design bridges that his older brother, Dallas Cunningham, 19, would one day build, since Dallas is an iron worker apprentice.
“He was a good little brother,” Dallas said. “He did my homework for me sometimes.”
At the end of last March, the family went to Disney World in Florida and to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, since Max loved football.
“We made the most of every day,” Bonnie said. “Whatever Max wanted to do, we tried to do it for him.”
When they got home, the family found out Max’s tumor had spread and he was bed-ridden. Teri said Max asked the doctors to remove the tumor after he died so they could study it for research.
“He said he wanted them to take it out so that no one else would have to go through what his mom went through,” Teri said.
“They did everything that they could for him. For us, it seemed like it wasn’t enough time.”
Max, 13, died on May 24 surrounded by his family at the Donnell House in Washington.
“Max said he’d only let go if I promised I would be OK,” Bonnie said as she became emotional talking about her son. “That’s the only time through this whole thing that I lied to him. I said I would be OK.”
Max’s death wasn’t the end of the family’s hardships last year. Max’s father, Bob Cunningham, died of cancer in September at the age of 57.
Two months later in November, Teri and Bonnie lost their mother, Evelyn Jordan, 77, to colon cancer.
“I spent a lot of time crying and trying to figure out why,” Bonnie said. “There are no words for it, I’m just empty. That was too much bad in a year, we need good.”
The family saw some joy when Dallas had a son last July, just two months after Max’s death. Dallas named him Braxton James Max.
“Max was looking forward to being an uncle,” Bonnie said. “That’s one of the things that bothered Dallas the most is that Max wasn’t able to meet the baby.”
The family hopes the spaghetti dinner and donation in Max’s honor will help spread awareness about his disease, DIPG, a highly aggressive and difficult-to-treat brain tumor often found in children.
“We’re trying to raise awareness about it just like when he donated the tumor (to be studied),” Teri said.
Bonnie said she is not yet sure if she’ll attend the fundraiser, since talking about Max is still very difficult for her.
“My family has rallied around me,” she said. “They keep me afloat.”
To donate to Max’s fundraiser, visit www.givetochildrens.org/home and search for “Team Max” on the fundraising tab on the right.