After a father gave a good-natured response to a text from a wrong number, donations have started pouring in for his son’s cancer treatment.
It all started when a woman named Syd accidentally texted Tony Wood with a picture of herself wearing an evening gown in a department store.
Wood, who is a father of six kids in Spring Hill, Tennessee, responded to the photos by saying: “I believe this message was intended for someone else. My wife isn’t home, so I couldn’t get her opinion, but the kids and I think you look stunning in your dress! You should definitely go with that one!”
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Not only that, but he also sent a photo of his kids all giving a reassuring thumbs up.
Syd’s friend Mandi Miller posted the exchange to Twitter where it immediately went viral.
Syd accidentally sent pics of her dress to the wrong number and this was their response ? pic.twitter.com/SWmcqSFiqh
— Mandi Miller ❂ (@bbymandi) March 8, 2018
Shortly after Miller posted the photos, social media users found that there had been two people missing from the photo of the happy family. Wood’s wife and his son Kaizler had both been at the chemo clinic when the photo was taken.
Kaizler lives with leukemia; a kind of cancer that affects blood and bone marrow. For the last 26 months, the Wood family has been trying to raise money for Kaizler’s chemo treatments.
Before the tweet of the accidental text went viral, the last donation that was made to the GoFundMe page was from four months ago. Then, a Twitter user posted a link of the crowdfunding page to social media earlier this week – and the donations have been pouring in ever since.
“Some Twitter users joined my son’s Facebook group and took the initiative to post the GoFundMe link themselves,” Wood told Good News Network. “It has been insane! The last I checked we’ve had over $19,000 donated since this all started.”
Over the course of the last few days alone, the funding page has now raised over $35,000.
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Wood says that he first created the campaign 26 months ago because – even though most of Kaizler’s treatment being covered through Medicaid – the disease still came with its fair share of money problems. Although the most recent slew of donations has ensured that he and his family won’t have the same issues in the future.
“All of our financial struggle has come from loss of time at work, travel, and all the other myriad expenses associated with fighting this disease.
“I saw some comments on various articles where people were talking about how awful it was that we had to worry about this situation due to our healthcare system. When we were at Children’s Mercy, their setup combined with Medicaid has taken care of all of our medical expenses in that regard.”
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Wood still expresses his gratitude for the internet’s outpouring of support. Kaizler, on the other hand, is apparently pretty unfazed by the whole thing.
“I don’t think Kaizler really realizes all of the attention he’s getting. We brought it to his attention, but he’s 6, so it was pretty much a ‘oh, that’s cool!’ response,” Wood told GNN.
Click To Share The News With Your Friends – OR, (Photo by Mandi Miller)
Hello, I thought I would help you out. We no longer live in Sedalia, MO – we live in Spring Hill, TN. Also, i never asked her to post my gofundme link, and she wasn’t the one who posted it. Some Twitter users joined my son’s Facebook group and took the initiative to post the gofundme link themselves. Just thought I would throw that out there!
This added comment is helpful. It would be good if the article could be changed so it’s more accurate, as it would be more powerful.
Wishing the little boy and his family lots of happiness!