FRISCO, Texas -- When a child is battling cancer, it rocks a family’s entire world. It is, perhaps, most difficult on a young sibling. But sometimes that sibling helps everyone around them cope.
At Hosp Elementary School in Frisco, no day in kindergarten is complete without story time or snack time, or lessons in writing and counting. Teacher Taylor Hahn makes sure her class is learning to follow directions and learning to make friends of all kinds – even the new friend they affectionately call Eli Monkey.
A smiling, cuddly stuffed monkey, Eli Monkey is as much a part of Mrs. Hahn’s class as any other student. “They get to read with him and write with him,” Hahn said, “and then we get to go to library, and he gets to pick out a library book to take home. So just like any other day, if Eli was here, he’d do all those things with us, so he’s still part of our classroom in spirit.”
Eli Monkey fills a chair that would otherwise sit empty because, as classmate Braxton Sanchez explained, “The other Eli is sick.”
Eli Jacobson is battling acute lymphocytic leukemia. Because of a seriously compromised immune system, the spring semester of kindergarten was out of the question for Eli the seven-year-old boy. So Eli Monkey became a stand-in, brought to school every day by Eli’s sister, Sara, a third grader at Hosp.
“So, I bring a monkey in a backpack to school because he represents my brother, but he’s a monkey coming to school instead of him,” she said.
Her bright smile hid a worried heart.
“It’s kind of rough on a sister with a brother who’s really sick,” Sara admitted. “It’s kind of stressful for the entire family because, well, my dad always told us that if something ever happened to us kids, that they would never be the same. And now I know what that’s like.”
Eli Monkey came to the Jacobson household through Monkey in my Chair, a nationwide program that puts stuffed monkeys in classrooms to take the place of a student who is fighting cancer.
“He’s basically like a second brother,” said Sara, her arm wrapped around the stuffed animal.
As Eli Monkey’s main caretaker, Sara feels like she’s a big part of her brother’s battle.
“He’s a very joyful kid. I mean he’s funny, he’s sweet, he’s happy,” she said of her little brother. “He’s basically a smaller version of my parents, because my parents are all those things.”
“I love him a lot,” she added. “I want him to know that everyone at school loves him and he’s being supported. I want him to know that he’s not being left out and that the monkey is taking his place.”
Eli’s prognosis is good. He is undergoing treatment. His family hopes he is able to return to school sometime during his first-grade year.
“You kind of think that your kiddos are untouchable and that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them,” Eli’s teacher Taylor Hahn said, “and then that one day you hear that there’s cancer in his body. It’s just not what you want ever in your class or in your lifetime. But it’s brought all of us closer, because we say that we never know what tomorrow holds and we just need to make sure we hug the ones that we love, respect each other, and be kind to each other.”
It seems to have brought Sara and Eli closer, too.
“It makes me feel good to be a part of this because I know he’s going through a lot,” Sara said “It makes me feel happy to be doing something.”