With their Long Island home destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and their income lost, it could be said that the Heckman family had very little to be thankful for yesterday.
But then there is the persistent good health, against all odds, of the middle child of the Heckman brood, 6-year-old leukemia patient Steven.
That, along with the news that Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain will help raise funds for the boy’s medical care, means “there’s always hope,” said mom Danielle, 29.
“It was stupid,” Steven said about Sandy, just the latest of the storms he has had to weather.
“It destroyed the house,” he said of the family’s two-bedroom Cape Cod cottage in Amityville.
“I can’t be in because it’s bad air. I had a cough, a croupy cough. I want to live in the house. The one thing I miss the most is my bunk bed. We couldn’t have Thanksgiving.”
Steven takes a daily chemotherapy pill, submits to weekly spinal-fluid testing, and has endured numerous emergency-room visits.
These days, the three Heckman kids — also including Alexandra, 9, and Juliana, 3 — plus Mom and Dad squeeze into the one-bedroom apartment of friends in Farmingdale.
Dad Steven Sr. gave up his pool-construction company to help care for his son.
“I do believe God is watching over us,” said Danielle as she prepared to cook turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie in their temporary home.
“A lot of people are helping us and most of them I don’t even know,” the mom said.
“I don’t even know when we will have a home but I am thankful that I still have my children. I have my family.”
Steven will need a bone marrow transplant to survive, and the chaos of Sandy has disrupted his search for a donor as well as for others who need help from the non-profit DKMS bone marrow donor registry, said cofounder Katharina Harf.
“It just seems like so much in her life is out of control,” Harf said of the mom, noting her perseverance and calling the boy, “really, really sweet.”
“A transplant is a second chance at life,” Harf said, urging people to go to getswabbed.org for information on obtaining a simple test kit. “You’re giving the cells of yourself to a human being you don’t even know. It’s the greatest gift of all.
“We have 3.4 million donors,” she added. “We’re the largest donor center in the world. You’re looking for the needle in the haystack, but out of 100 people who donate, five people will get a new chance at life — it’s amazing.”