CHAPEL HILL — At 4 years old, most children are running around outside and getting into some kind of mischief. But for one Scotland County boy, he spends most of his time at UNC Children’s North Carolina Children’s Hospital fighting cancer.
In March, Jayce Glossner had been wrestling with his dad Joey when, over the next few days he began complaining of a stomach ache and, in his sleep, he was rubbing his stomach. Joey took him to Purcell Clinic to get checked out and they told him to take Jayce straight to Scotland Memorial for scans.
“It felt like forever and I knew something was wrong because a friend did the scan and he came out with tears in his eyes — but wouldn’t tell me anything,” Joey said. “Then his pediatrician came and told me it was cancer and that they had called Chapel Hill and they were coming to get us.”
Jayce was originally diagnosed with stage-one kidney cancer and was scheduled for surgery on April 3 — his dad’s birthday — to have it removed, but the sack ruptured and he was taken into surgery and the 4.75-inch tumor was removed. Afterward, doctors diagnosed him with stage-three kidney cancer.
“He’s gone through more than most adults have already in life,” Joey said. “He lost his mom in a car accident almost two years ago and now he’s battling cancer … it took two months for me to tell him he had cancer, I just kept telling him his stomach was sick.
“When I told him, he told me not to worry and that everything will be fine because his mama is watching after him.”
Despite everything, Joey says that Jayce is still the happy little boy and that, when they get an hour to go outside, he has a fishing rod with a golf ball attached that he’ll use to pretend he’s fishing in the parking garage and, at night, the two will go with some Hershey chocolate bars — Jayce’s favorite — and watch the helicopters. Jayce’s doctors and nurses even get in on the fun on occasions.
“Everyone here is good as gold,” Joey said. “They’ll come and have water gun and Nerf gun fights with him. I couldn’t have asked for a better facility to be taking care of him.”
Joey also is thankful for the community standing behind him. Recently, after coming from a biopsy, Jayce announced that he wanted to go to the beach and Joey put it on Facebook, not thinking anything about it. Not long after he got a call from Brittany Parrish about doing a fundraiser to get them to the beach.
Parrish was raffling off a cake with tickets costing $2 with a winner to be picked Sunday.
“We weren’t looking for anything like that,” Joey said. “I had just posted it then Brittany called and she already had everything written up and she asked if she could post it. They’ve (Brittany and her husband Richard) been so good to us and I know I can call them at any time.”
Since being diagnosed, Jayce has done 63 rounds of chemo and the two spend a lot of their time traveling between Raleigh and home. Despite all the chemo, with more left to go, Jayce isn’t letting it get to him.
“He is taking it like a champ,” Joey said. “He’s a fighter and he’s not giving up.”
Joey chronicles Jayce’s journey on his Facebook — Joey Glossner — where he has more than 20,000 followers keeping up with him and his son.
