Faith helps Dallas mom and 13-year-old son after cancer diagnoses

Mica Petersen had gotten a clear PET scan from her doctor. After over a year of hospital visits and chemotherapy, life was finally returning to normal.

Then her 13-year-old son Pike got sick. While his Mom was still recovering from lymphatic cancer, Pike was diagnosed in July with an aggressive form of leukemia.

Sitting on the living room couch in their Dallas home earlier this week, Mica and Pike recalled the first days after his diagnosis. “I was a complete wreck,” Mica said. She also remembered how members of their church, Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, stepped in to help her family of six.

Morgan Womack, a minister at the church, set up a Meal Train page where church families could sign up to deliver meals. The schedule was full of names within a week. “We haven’t been to the grocery store in probably a month,” Mica said.

“Once those three got a hold of it, all I had to do was sit back and just watch them go, because they have been just incredible,” she said.

Scheduled for this Sunday at Park Cities Baptist Church, the drive aims to help Pike and others like him. Only 4 out of 10 patients diagnosed with blood cancer or a blood disorder find a genetic match willing to donate blood stem cells, according to Earl Young’s Team.

Getting swabbed to enter the donor registry only takes six minutes, said Amy Roseman, the managing director of Earl Young’s Team. Anyone between 18-55 can register. Donors’ stem cells replenish within a week.

As the Petersens search for a match, they continue to lean on their faith and church family.

“My faith has helped me to kind of just get myself up and just say, you’re gonna do whatever is gonna happen,” Pike said. “Whatever He does, I know it’s for a reason.”

Before his mom was diagnosed in March 2022, Pike said he tended to sleep during Sunday services. A church youth group service changed his perspective. It “was the first night that I just … I cried,” he said. “I felt God for the first time.”

When asked what he’d say to potential donors, Pike thought for a minute before answering. “If you were sick and if you were in my position, would you want someone to come to your drive to save your life?”