BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — No family wants to spend more time than they need to at the hospital, but one little girl from Bakersfield has undergone treatment here at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles for more than five years.
While dealing with her ongoing struggles, her family decided to step out and help others.
- Video shows Hey There Delilah Foundation barbecue benefit and book signing and the Children's Hospital Los Angeles
- 9-year-old Delilah Loya has been battling cancer for five years.
- Although Loya's family says the ongoing battle has been hard, Delilah's mom, Samantha Loya Cerrata decided to start the Hey There Delilah Foundation with her best friend, Stephani Pierce, to support anyone diagnosed with cancer.
On a hot Saturday in Bakersfield, some residents still enjoyed music, a barbecue, and a little shopping at the Hey There Delilah Foundation barbecue benefit and book signing.
"Oh, I love this," one of the attendees at the benefit said while looking at the 'Hey There Delilah' book.
It's all in the name of one little girl.
"Delilah is 9-years-old. She's super feisty," Samantha Loya Cerrata, Delilah's mom, said. "She's a fighter."
Five years ago, Loya Cerrata says she noticed a difference in her first-born baby girl.
She says Delilah wouldn't eat as much or play with her toys, and after multiple doctor visits, Loya Cerrata received a call that changed her life.
"They told us it's stage four neuroblastoma cancer, and I was really big and pregnant. I just kind of looked to my husband and was like 'She's only 4.' I kind of wanted him to fix it, but he couldn't do anything about it," Loya Cerrata recalled.
She says hundreds of hospital visits at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles followed.
"I feel like I live here sometimes," she told 23ABC News as she stood outside of the hospital with a bag of blankets and fresh clothes to spend the night with Delilah.
After more than 100 rounds of chemotherapy, a lifetime's worth of MIBGtherapy, a type of radiation treatment, plus an estimated $40,000 in expenses over the last year, Loya Cerrata says Delilah is still fighting.
"It's not just us going through it, there's so many families and so many kids and so many grown-ups going through this that don't have help and don't have the support that we have," she said.
Doctors diagnose between 600 to 1000 people with neuroblastoma in the United States each year, according to Yale Medicine, and for the first time, the American Cancer Society estimates that 2024 will see more than 2 million new cancer cases in the U.S.
"There's not a lot of help for grownups who are fighting cancer," Loya Cerrata added, telling me she received help from foundations that support families fighting against childhood cancer, but she didn't see the same resources for adults.
That is why Loya Cerrata decided to team up with her best friend, Stephani Pierce, to start the Hey There Delilah Foundation, which launched in March, to provide financial support to anyone battling cancer.
"It started very slowly, very grassroots, just the two of us at her kitchen table," Pierce said.
The two first bonded through their kids, and when Pierce's son was invited to a birthday party for one of Loya Cerrata's daughters, she met Delilah for the first time.
Pierce says when she saw Delilah bald and in a princess dress, she was able to share her own experience with cancer with Loya Cerrata.
"I was five months pregnant when I was diagnosed," Pierce said. "They found a tumor in my abdomen wall."
Pierce wrote a book called 'Hey There Delilah' to tell Delilah's story and raise money for the foundation.
Since their launch in March, the foundation was able to donate $5000 to five people with cancer, and they say this is just the beginning.
"I didn't receive any help. Any help that I received was because of my husband's insurance. It had nothing to do with community help, so I know how much a $50 gift card would have gone… I know what it would have done," Pierce said.
As for Delilah, she's intubated at the hospital, battling a respiratory infection.
Loya Cerrata says Delilah's stable and responsive, and she's hopeful to see her daughter recover.
"If there's anything that they can do to save her, they better do everything that they can," she said.
You can follow them on social media for updates on Instagram @heytheredelilahofficial and Hey There Delilah on Facebook.
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