It seemed like such a simple thing - just a bump on the knee. Seven-year-old Brandon had been playing around with other boys. He didn’t seem to hit his knee hard, but the pain lingered with him. It lingered enough that his father took him to a doctor where the Thomases shockingly learned that a tumor called osteosarcoma had been growing in Brandon’s left leg.

“I was in pieces,” Jimmie Thomas recalled. But in the midst of their nightmare, the doctor told Jimmie that his son would be sent to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® for treatment. It was a blessing, Jimmie thought. His son would be going to the hospital he himself had grown up supporting through his church. “It was the Lord working in mysterious ways,” Jimmie said. “We always donated money to St. Jude, every fourth Sunday of the month. It never crossed my mind that I would need St. Jude.”

At St. Jude, Brandon began a series of chemotherapy treatments, but the tumor proved to be too resilient. Five months later Brandon and his family faced the reality that to beat the cancer, Brandon’s left leg would have to be amputated. The young boy faced the prospect with courage. “He handled it better than anyone in the family,” Jimmie said. “The pain he went through (before the amputation) was the hardest part.” In fact, Jimmie said that when Brandon sees the doctor who performed the amputation at St. Jude, he will joke with him. “There’s the man that took my leg,” he’ll tell passers-by.

But the amputation has not slowed Brandon. He wears a prosthetic limb and loves to play basketball, baseball and football. Losing his leg forced him to relearn to ride his bike, but Brandon overcame that challenge as well. “He never slows down until he gets tired or thirsty,” his father said. “It makes me feel great that he doesn’t stop and just keeps going.”