Childhood Cancer Warrior Spotlight: Mila
In the words of her mother, Kendall
Telling a complete story that encompasses so many smaller ones has been a challenge. However, one thing is certain: trials and suffering are part of everyone’s journey. Before this story, Josh and I had talked about how we hadn’t experienced many hardships in our marriage. We often discussed our gratitude for healthy kids, considering health a huge blessing, especially because we thought we weren’t well-suited for a serious trial. But God had a different plan for us. Mila is a miracle. Her name literally means “miracle.” Before she was even formed in my womb, God had already chosen her name and set her story in motion.
Mila loves spending time with her siblings, doing gymnastics, playing with her cousins, and especially holding babies. If you know Mila, you know her fierce love for babies—the real ones. Throughout late 2023 and early 2024, Mila began to show signs of increasing fatigue and paleness. At first, we didn’t think much of it, considering the busy season of life and the winter months. But one day in February, even her love for babies couldn’t compete with her lack of energy. This was a red flag for us and completely out of character for her. We investigated her symptoms and discovered she had a hemoglobin level of 4.9! We went to our local hospital, Midland Memorial, then to Lubbock, and finally ended up at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The diagnosis was AML. Acute Myelogenous Leukemia is a rare and aggressive form of cancer, especially in children. I remember those early moments—days and nights filled with so much information, waiting, and research. We were talking with doctors, praying, and waiting some more. And in those moments of waiting, God showed us the beauty of surrender. The more we surrendered, the more we were filled with peace and strength that couldn’t be taken away.
In those first weeks, we felt overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from our community. Family, friends, and even strangers surrounded us. People prayed for us every hour, on the hour, for days! People made sure our other children were cared for, and helped with meals, mowing, carpooling, flights, tutoring, and so much more. The text messages, calls, letters, and prayers were relentless. We felt, saw, and experienced the body of Christ rally for our family, for Mila.
Not long after, we were introduced to the Sky High crew. Brittney and Stevie (the hero of the story) visited us regularly, and our relationship grew. In early summer, Sky High flew our kids out so we could all be together. They provided lodging and hospitality, bridging the distance between us. Our journey was intense—155 days of sleeping in the hospital, separated from our family, eight hours away. But Sky High made it possible for us to connect in a special way. From our dinners on the ninth floor with Brittney and Stevie came the idea of Sunday Supper—a collaborative effort to bring warm meals to families with children in the hospital.
Mila is resilient. She is pure. She endured months of needle pokes, chemotherapy, sedation, monitors, IVs, medications, interrupted sleep, constant monitoring, scans, and side effects. But despite all of this, there were days when I felt as though we were undercover. Leukemia felt like our costume, and I shared this feeling with one of our night nurses early on. I told her it felt almost wrong to find so much happiness in a space filled with so much pain. She then told me, “You are here on assignment, not just for sickness.” It felt like a holy hug. We realized that the Russos were assigned to the 9th floor for this time. God allows trails to prove the genuineness of our faith. We knew difficulties were ahead, but we didn’t know what God had planned for us. But He did.
Our life before that day in February was full—full of family rhythms and habits that helped us thrive. We had systems in place that allowed our family of six to navigate daily life. We had routines for reading in the morning, making healthy snacks, working through tasks like schoolwork, laundry, meal preparation, exercise, and prayer, and we always gathered around the dinner table to share the highlights of our day. What’s interesting about our story is that everything changed, yet the Lord still allowed our rhythms to remain. Our location and people changed, but we continued with our morning readings (we had more time to linger). We focused on learning which foods would best fuel Mila’s healing. We worked through 3rd-grade lessons and summer learning. We made weekly trips to do laundry on the 7th floor—like going to the well, you had to time it just right to find an open washer, but the company was always good. We stayed active walking laps around the hospital floors, carrying or pushing babies. We formed new relationships, invested in others, and shared countless moments of laughter, tears, prayer, and meals in the family room.
The suffering we experienced cannot compare to the richness of God’s presence that we found through it all.
