Christmas Comes Early For Five-Year-Old Suburban Kid With Cancer

December 14, 2014 1:59 PM

Christmas Without Cancer volunteers delivering gifts to the Ellis family. (Credit: Bill Figel, Figel Public Relations LLC)

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(CBS) Christmas came early Sunday for a west suburban family gearing up for another round of cancer treatment for their five-year-old son.

Chris Ellis will check in to the hospital tomorrow for a week-long clinical trial for his stage four neuroblastoma that will leave him highly radioactive.

But his mother Danielle wont have to worry about buying and wrapping the familys gifts because volunteers with the group Christmas without Cancer have taken care of that for them.

Gerri Neylon came up with idea 11 years ago while working as a nurse in the oncology department of Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.

That first year, she asked friends and family to donate gifts and gift cards to a young woman she met in the hospital who was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. The response was three vans full of donations.

Ellis family clockwise: Ted, Danielle, Chris and Maria. (Credit: Bill Figel, Figel Public Relations LLC)

Since then, Neylon has set up a website for her non-profit, http://www.christmaswithoutcancer.org, and it has delivered gifts to 12 families in the last week alone.

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Christmas Comes Early For Five-Year-Old Suburban Kid With Cancer