A Cleburne boy in a four month battle against brain cancer learned this week he's been accepted to a four week treatment clinical trial at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
Brody Nelson, 9, would just assume throw pitches and take swings on the baseball diamond. However, since January, Ty and Courtney Nelson say their youngest child has instead stared down an opponent far more formidable.
"When I got cancer, it was a bit scary, a bit sad," Brody said.
Ty Nelson said when his son went to sleep on January 7th, he was a healthy child.
"We started this journey with finding Brody unresponsive the next morning," Nelson said.
Eleven hours of brain surgery later, doctors at Cook's Children's Hospital in Fort Worth told the family that Brody had brain cancer. Six weeks of proton radiation therapy followed with hopes the tumor would be eliminated. It wasn't.
"There was a time when it almost felt hopeless," Courtney Nelson said.
But Brody's mom pointed out it also became a time when her hometown of Cleburne rallied around her family and her son.
The #fightlikebrody started popping up in the Johnson County town, including a large sign directly across the street from his elementary school.
The Cleburne High School baseball team also adopted the cause and invited Brody to be a "senior for a night" and throw out the first pitch at recent Yellowjackets game.
On Friday, Brody was also able to meet players from the Texas Rangers and receive an autograph from future Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre. Some of the players even wore "Pray for Brody" bracelets during the game vs Seattle.
“We trust with everything that God is going to take care of him and us at the same time," Courtney Nelson says.
That starts on Monday as Brody begins four weeks of treatment as part of a clinical trial at St. Jude, considered the leading research hospital for pediatric cancer.