Marathon Runner Raises Money for Cancer in Honor of Hingham Girl

Emily Taylor just wants to be a normal 8-year-old girl. 

For the last few years, she has been known as “the girl who had cancer.”

 "Emily is off treatment right now but, for over two years, her treatment was very arduous and she missed an incredible amount of school,” said her mother Sara Taylor of Hingham.  “She missed almost all of kindergarten and a good chunk of first grade; she’s now in the second grade.”

 Emily was diagnosed with Acute Lympohoblastic Leukemia when she was 5- years-old and was in the hospital for 52 days when she was first diagnosed. 

Emily completed her treatments at Dana Farber Cancer Institute last fall.  She now  plays basketball and soccer, and danced in Boston Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” as one of Clara’s dolls, but for two years before that, she endured cancer.  Emily was given daily doses or weekly infusions of chemotherapy, numerous blood transfusions, several blood platelet transfusions, and also lumbar punctures to put chemotherapy directly into her spine.

But during her treatment, she met Kara O’Toole of Quincy, who is a Dana Farber Boston Marathon Challenge runner.  She and Emily were paired together in 2010 as part of Dana Farber’s patient partner” program, a program that matches runners with children who are cancer patients at Dana Farber.

 “We all have been impacted in some way by cancer, and we will all continue to be until there is a cure,” said O’Toole, whose mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004.  “But to see that impact first hand through the eyes of a child shed a different light on it for me. I am a mother of four children that range in age from 13 to three and I could not imagine the strength that a child and their family would need to render to beat cancer.”

 O’Toole has become a close part of Emily’s family, said her mother, and they appreciate O’Toole running and raising money in Emily’s honor.  

 “To see someone running 26.2 miles in your daughter’s name, and in her honor, it’s just very powerful,” said Taylor who will be waiting at Mile 25 with other Patient Partners to cheer on the runners for their last mile.  “Kara will stop and she’ll hug Emily, it’s an incredibly emotional time.” 

 O’Toole said that seeing Emily, her family and the other Patient Partners at mile 25 is uplifting.

“It's the motivation you need at that point in the marathon,” she said.  “You know that the end is near but your energy is dwindling.  I liken it to what those going through treatment must feel as they go for their last treatments.  You want it to be over and it is so close.  Knowing it's your last mile gives you the energy you need to make it through.”

 O’Toole’s goal is to raise $50,000 for cancer research.  To date, she is half way there.

 “One hundred percent of the money we raise will go directly to research so that hopefully my children's children and Emily's children can live in a world without cancer,” O’Toole said.

She has raised $25,000 so far, in great part due to ‘Kakes for Kara,’ a cake eating fundraiser   that raised $11,000 in one hour last week.

While Emily’s cancer treatments are finished, she does have some lasting effects, including a lack of strength in her legs, for which she attends physical therapy. 

 "She’s doing great in school, she played basketball this winter, she’s playing soccer now, she dances with the Boston Ballet School, she loves to read, she loves to sing, she loves to be just a normal kid.”

For more information or to donate in Emily’s honor, visit http://www.runDFMC.org/2011/karao.  Donations of $25 or more will be matched by the foundation.