NORTH EAST, Md. — A rough and tumble four-year-old, Hunter McCoy defied the odds, beating the cancer that followed him at birth.
“He had his first brain surgery at four weeks old, and then after he recovered from the brain surgery, chemo started right away,” said Jordyn Yedinak, Hunter’s mother, “So the first year of his life, he went through rounds of chemo and then when he was six months old, the tumor was removed.”
95 percent of it anyway.
A year would follow filled with high-dose chemo and radiation to attack the rest of it, which came with its own challenge.
“There have been times when we were in patient, we were basically living at the hospital, where he would need blood transfusions, red blood cells, platelets, every single day,” said Yedinak, “and there were times when we would have to wait for it to come from different states just so that he could have what he needed.”
It was the more than one hundred blood transfusions, which Hunter McCoy required, which inspired the blood donation drives, which continue here in Cecil County today.
Four-year-old brain tumor survivor pays it forward
It started with Connor Bouchelle, Hunter’s mother’s best friend, helping in the only way she knew how.
“So I started donating and just happened to run into one of the coordinators and just said, “Well, hey, how about I just host a blood drive?’ and we did,” recalled Bouchelle, “We had like 95 donors the first drive, which is like huge.”
And it’s only grown more with a pair of blood drives each year at the North East VFW, providing the same potentially life-saving gift that helped Hunter overcome the odds.
“It’s a whole new world,” his mother told us, “I think back to when we were basically living in the hospital and it’s kind of mind blowing to me that’s where we were and this is where he is now. I don’t think people realize how important it is, not just for pediatric… you know… any kind of person whether it’s cancer. No matter what it is. Blood is super important and it’s super important to donate."
