Tina Sedore with her two daughters and her son, Lincoln Drake. Photo By Kyle Ellington, QNet News
BELLEVILLE – Every time Tina Sedore puts her son to sleep, she just hopes he will wake up the next morning.
“I’m terrified that something will happen in the night, and I’m always waking up and making sure he’s still breathing,” the Belleville resident says.
“I just love him. He actually sleeps right beside me. He won’t sleep unless he has his hands on me – has his hands on my face or in my hair. If I move in the night he automatically wakes up. So we’re really close,” she said.
Lincoln Drake, three, has been battling cancer since he was 13 months old. When Sedore and Lincoln’s father, Jamie Drake, noticed that their son wasn’t sitting up, eating or walking, they went to see a doctor. He noticed that Lincoln’s head was bigger than it was supposed to be.
An ultrasound was done but before the results came back, Lincoln had got quite sick, she said. They went to the hospital and were told there was a lot of fluid in the boy’s brain. “At three o’clock in the morning we were shipped by ambulance to Sick Kids (hospital),” Sedore said. “Then a few days later they did an MRI and found a tumour.”
Lincoln underwent a nine-hour surgery. Sedore described it as horrible.
“We were the first ones there and the last ones to leave. We didn’t get any updates. We had this one guy run in and run towards us, and we thought something was wrong – but he just wanted us to sign papers to donate whatever was left over from Lincoln, like his brain fluid or some of his tumours, so they can do research on it. So we had to sign those papers and Lincoln was still in surgery. So that was upsetting, because we didn’t know if he (would) come out of surgery.”
Lincoln started 70 weeks of chemotherapy on June 22, 2017.
The family had to travel between Belleville, Toronto and Kingston for his treatments.
“It’s very tiring having to wake up at three in the morning just to get up there and beat traffic,” Sedore said. “And he has appointments for his eye, genetics appointments yesterday, heart surgery and now plastic surgery.”
They tend to get dirty looks when they are out with Lincoln, she said.
“Little kids – they don’t know the difference but they’re always asking, ‘What’s wrong with his face?’ and, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ and questioning why he can’t walk. It’s hard to explain to little children what’s wrong,” she said.
Sedore and her family were at a fundraiser for Lincoln at the Beaufort Pub this fall that raised over $4,100 from a packed group of supporters.
“It was amazing. I didn’t expect that. When I first arrived, I thought it would be a nice night, but I did not expect that many people,” Sedore said.
“I thought it was great. We went so long with no help at all from anybody. And to have a couple of fundraisers in a couple of months – it was just great. There were so many good people.”
The most heart-warming moment was when well-known Belleville musician Andy Forgie sang a song for her son, she said.
Even though a tumour has hindered Lincoln, he still finds ways to communicate with his family.
“We just started teaching him (sign language) and he’s picked it up really well just over the last few months,” Sedore said. “He’s a very smart little boy. He understands everything that you’re saying to him – it’s just hard for him to communicate back.”
Her son has tremendous amounts of strength and courage to have been fighting every single day, she said.
Her advice for those going through a similar situation is to never give up: ‘Take one day at a time and make it through that day.”
If you’d like to support Lincoln and his family, you can do so through their Facebook page, Lincoln’s Fight.
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