Shaving cream drips down Corey Felton’s neck and over his “Cancer Sucks” tattoo on his shoulder September 27 while his daughter, Parker, gently shaves off his hair outside the family’s temporary apartment in the eastern suburbs of Salt Lake City. The 3-year-old lost most of her hair nine weeks into an almost 40-week chemotherapy schedule that followed a series of radiation treatments to fight tumors in her lungs.
Parker Felton reaches for the hand of her grandma, Penny Gaitan, on Oct. 5, while waiting for anti-nausea medication during her 10th week of chemotherapy treatment at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. “I think she’s just getting really tired of it,” her father, Corey Felton, later reflected at week 13 of Parker’s nearly 40-week chemo schedule. “She had a week of inpatient and then these fevers kept popping up. It’s been tough.”
Parker gazes up in delight at soap drizzling over the sunroof inside the laser car wash, a sacred post-chemotherapy tradition with her mom, Nicole, on Oct. 26, near the family’s apartment in Salt Lake City. The frequent hospital visits and chemotherapy treatments are exhausting and, at times, traumatic for Parker. The promise of the car wash gave them both something to look forward to at the end of hard days, Nicole said.
LEFT: Reese, 4, rests her eyes against the rush of wind Sept. 17 while boating with her dad and grandparents on Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Weekend boating trips were a family ritual before childhood kidney cancer upended the Feltons’ lives. In an effort to restore some sense of normalcy for Reese while her mom and sister are hundreds of miles away, Corey and Reese returned to the water.
RIGHT: Parker and Reese Felton’s dolls Flower Girl and Bunny Girl are seated for a tea party on Oct. 22 before a birthday party for the sisters’ father, Corey, at his parents’ home in Wilson.
“Parker, you surprised me!” Corey Felton says as his 3-year-old daughter rushes into his arm during his 43rd birthday party in Wilson as his wife, Nicole, pulls older daughter Reese into an embrace. Unbeknownst to Corey, Nicole and Parker drove home from Salt Lake City, where Parker is receiving chemotherapy treatments, to celebrate his birthday in person.
Parker Felton clutches her mom’s wrist as they play with purple, glittery slime, while Parker receives chemotherapy at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital on Oct. 5. Child life specialists at the hospital facilitate activities, such as making slime, to help Parker and Nicole pass the time while the medicine is delivered intravenously via a port in Parker’s chest — a process Parker calls “giving Tubie a drink.”
Parker insists on pushing her “tower” through the halls of Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital toward the playroom on Oct. 26 during chemotherapy treatment in Salt Lake City. Nearby, nurses offer a guiding hand and cheer her on: “Keep pushing Parker. You can do it!”
LEFT: Dressed as Anna and Elsa from the Disney movie “Frozen,” Parker and mom Nicole practice getting into character on Oct. 27 ahead of a halloween party at Huntsman Cancer Institute. The pair had been looking forward to the inpatient celebration for weeks.
RIGHT: An hour later, Nicole strokes Parker’s forehead as she drifts in and out of a nauseous sleep in their apartment in Salt Lake City. Feeling the side effects of the previous day’s intensive chemotherapy treatment, Parker started throwing up when they arrived at the parking lot for Huntsman’s Halloween party, and the pair had to go home. “We’re crushed,” Nicole said through tears. “I just wanted her to have this one thing.”
Parker giggles as rainbows, flashing lights and shapes dance across the walls of her chemotherapy room on Oct. 26 before the start of her weekly treatment at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. The “disco chemo” atmosphere was facilitated by the hospital’s child life specialists, who use play to help children cope with the stresses accompanying health care.