When you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not zebras. But, sometimes they are zebras.

During the fall of 2014, Rebecca entered her second season on the Highland Park High School’s cross-country team. As expected, the long-distance running took a toll on her body, and she frequently felt soreness and discomfort in her legs. Every runner knows that these temporary aches and pains go hand in hand with long-distance running, so she followed the usual protocol of stretching, ice-baths, rest and the occasional anti-inflammatory.

But, when the season ended, the tenderness in her legs did not go away. In fact, the pain got worse. By March, the pain in her legs occasionally left her in tears and greatly interfered with her quality of life. An emergency trip to her pediatrician was followed within an hour by x-rays to determine if her leg pain could be caused by something other than overuse. And while sitting in a wheelchair and making friends with the clinic’s medical staff, she saw the zebras running towards her. The bones in her legs were covered with tumors.

Rebecca always treated school like a job. Like a “show up for school and work every day or your family won’t eat this week” kind of job. It was hard to tell if she was more upset about the tumors or about missing school, but the next days were whirlwinds of medical appointments, scans, biopsies, and prayers. When she finally received the diagnosis of Ewing’s Sarcoma, she treated it like another job—she put her head down and got to work.  She did not want to talk about her prognosis or how tragic it was to have an almost incurable cancer at the age of 16-- she wanted to do the necessary to complete her job and feed her family.

The treatment for metastatic Ewing’s Sarcoma, especially when the primary tumor is in the pelvis, had little chance of success at that time. The toxic chemotherapy left Rebecca violently ill for months, and our petite daughter got even smaller. She lost her hair, her eyebrows, and her perfect school attendance. Her body was frail, weak, and broken, but her mind and attitude were the same as always. Positive. Confident. Cheerful. Determined.

Her friends and family rallied around her and adopted the phrase “Rally For Rebecca.” She was never alone during the hundreds of nights she spent in the hospital over 33 months (even when she wished for some solitude, she could not shake her loyal friends or her sisters or brother who were never too busy to sit with her).  It may be hard to believe, but she never complained or felt sorry for herself or wondered why this was happening to her. Living with cancer and undergoing painful and invasive and time-consuming treatments was her job, and if you learn nothing else about Rebecca, know she was always very good at her job.

Rebecca’s illness changed not only her life, but it changed the life of everyone she met. Seeing the struggles and difficulty of getting her the right medical treatment in a timely and efficient manner opened her (and all of our) eyes to the need for widely-available healthcare for all. Seeing the families who had to take their extremely ill and fragile children on a bus to the hospital to receive treatment opened all of our eyes to the needs in our community. Seeing families bring a case of ramen for a week at the hospital and knowing that they would not be able to scour the metroplex for the one special food that might tempt their starving and critically ill child to eat opened all of our eyes to our undeserved privilege. Rebecca witnessed all of this while enduring unimaginable suffering of her own, and she made it her new job to do what she could to help these families.

The idea for the Rebecca Buchanan Brimmage Foundation came from watching her generosity and selflessness. After Rebecca was granted a Wish from Make-A-Wish, she began speaking at Make-A-Wish fundraisers in the Dallas area and telling her story about the power of a Wish. She wanted to do her part to help raise money to other ill children could have an experience of a lifetime. 

While Rebecca happily “stole” her sister’s special Sonic dinners that her sister saved to eat as late-night snacks at the hospital, Rebecca  gave generously to these families that she did not know. In December 2017, Rebecca was on hospice and confined to the couch in our living room, but she still cheerfully bossed her family around and gave us instructions on how to make the holidays special for as many of these families she could afford to sponsor.

The Rebecca Buchanan Brimmage Foundation started with a goal of continuing Rebecca’s generosity and focusing on three areas that were near and dear to her: 1) raising money to help grant Make-A-Wish Wishes to critically ill children in North Texas, 2) assisting oncology families over the holidays, and 3) endowing an annual college scholarship to be awarded to a graduating senior at Highland Park High School – in honor and memory of Rebecca who never got to attend her dream college. 

Through the incredible generosity of friends, family, and the community, the Foundation has continued Rebecca’s legacy of recognizing others in need and the responsibility to do our part to help make their lives a little brighter.