A 7-year-old girl from Idaho is looking to turn her 1,000th day of chemotherapy into a celebration with the hopes of receiving 1,000 cards from strangers all across the country.
As Good Morning America reported, Zoe Ray has been battling cancer for the last three years, but says receiving cards from well-wishers offers the perfect distraction from her taxing treatments.
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At just 5 years old, Zoe’s doctors discovered the youngster had a brain tumor roughly the size of a ping pong ball, and diagnosed her with optic nerve glioma.
The tumor’s location and connection to her eye made surgery impossible, so she began chemotherapy in 2017 to try and shrink the growth instead.
In the last three years, Zoe has undergone three different types of chemo treatments, and doctors expect she’ll have to continue chemo throughout her entire childhood.
“Each of the chemotherapies is different, but all of them will decrease her energy, decrease her appetite and that in turn will cause some intermittent headaches and just kind of feeling blah or under the weather,” Zoe’s doctor, Eugenia Chang, a pediatric hematology-oncology specialist at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Boise, told GMA .
“It’s like having a low-grade flu all of the time.”
With Zoe’s 1,000th day of treatment approaching, her family decided to do something special to help lift the young girls’ spirits.
In a post on her official Facebook page, Zoey Ray of Sunshine , they put out a plea for people all across the country to send cards of encouragement to Zoe as she nears this milestone.
“She smiles everyday, even through the tummy aches and tiredness,” the post reads. “She lights up everybody’s heart that she meets. She is a brave warrior who could use some lifting up.”
After it was shared on August 7, that post quickly went viral, and Zoe ended up with a mail box sufficiently stuffed with cards.
In total, she received nearly 500 cards from people in more than two dozen states, and even some from Canada!
“They say they’re thinking of me and they share stories of encouragement,” Zoe told GMA. “It makes me really excited and happy and it gets me distracted opening the cards all day.”
November 3 will mark 1,000 days of chemo treatment, but before then Zoe hopes to receive 1,000 cards from people in all 50 states.
And if the youngster’s reaction to the first almost 500 cards is any indication, receiving more will only further lift her spirits.
“She says when she’s distracted by reading the cards her head doesn’t hurt and her stomach doesn’t hurt,” her mom, Chrissy Ray, said. “She’ll stand by the door waiting for the mail and just shake with excitement.”
Even her doctor reconizes the tremendous effect the strangers’ post cards and letters have had on Zoe.
“These are the kinds of things that make all the difference for kids and it is amazing what her family has done to turn this from something that feels like it’s just another, never-ending treatment that she’s going to need to do for many more years to something that is an accomplishment,” Chang told GMA. “She got through this. She’s a real fighter. She knows how to make something of her life even though there are obstacles in her way.”
If you want to send Zoe a card to mark her 1,000th day of treatments, you can do so at the following address:
c/o Zoe Ray of Sunshine
1930 N Wind Cave Way
Eagle, ID 83616
