News Summary

SPRINGFIELD — One-year-old Gavin Goeser might spend his Christmas in the hospital.

"For Christmas, Lane and Emily just want a liver for Gavin," Rachel Goeser-Blank said tearfully, adding that they "hope that the Christmas week he'll be well enough to go home."

Goeser was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, or liver cancer, on Sept. 5, barely a week after his first birthday.

While Goeser and his mother are caught up in the turmoil of his treatment, his older siblings, Lane, 9, and Emily, 7, stay with Goeser-Blank's parents in Springfield and attend St. Bernard's Catholic Central Elementary school.

Goeser began chemotherapy in September at Dayton Children's Hospital and will soon undergo his fifth and most intense round at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

He and his mother moved to the Ronald McDonald house in Cincinnati three weeks ago so they could be closer to the hospital.

Doctors there have experience with hepatoblastoma, which usually appears in children under age 5, Goeser-Blank said.

The Ronald house, costing $20 per night, "is really nice, like a home environment," she said. The other families there don't flinch when Goeser gets sick, "because their kids are sick, too," she said.

Fellow Ronald house residents are like a support system, she said.

A typical day for Goeser-Blank begins with giving Goeser four or five medications, flushing his broviac central line — which allows doctors to draw blood without poking him with needles — with saline, feeding him through a feeding tube and visiting two or three doctors.

"He thinks it's normal," she said, and he smiles through the pain.

The only "cure" for Goeser is a liver transplant, but even the transplant is not a guaranteed cure, Goeser-Blank said. With a transplant, the remaining cancer might be beaten with chemo treatments. If he's cancer-free for five years, Goeser will be considered cured, but he always will need to worry about his body rejecting the transplant.

Goeser is not yet on a transplant list because his lungs need to be clear first. A CAT scan is scheduled for today to check on his lungs.

Goeser's name on that list is what the family wants most for Christmas, but having him home for the holiday would be nice, too. With the unpredictability of his health, making plans is difficult.

If the chemotherapy keeps him from home on Christmas, the family will celebrate in Cincinnati as best they can.

"I'm trying to take one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time," she said, sighing.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0349 or dselden@coxohio.com.

How to help

The Goeser Transplant Fund at Security National Bank, 40 S. Limestone St.

Money also can be donated to Springfield and Urbana Fifth Third Banks:

20 S. Tutle Road., Springfield

2700 N. Limestone St., Springfield

965 N. Bechtel Ave., Springfield

225-231 S. Main St., Urbana