Coronavirus: 3-year-old Minnesota girl gets parade on final day of chemo treatment

PRIOR LAKE, Minn. — Social distancing was not going to rain on Mabel’s parade.

Mabel Franks, a 3-year-old from Prior Lake, Minnesota, had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments for two years. She had earned a party after the last day of her cancer treatment, but the coronavirus pandemic made that impossible.

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So, family and friends brought the party to Mabel, as dozens of decorated cars and trucks rolled past her home Sunday, KARE-TV reported. The child waved from her father’s arms as fire trucks and cars decorated with balloons drove through the cul-de-sac where her family lives.

“We just felt we had to do something to let her know how proud we are and what a warrior and survivor she’s been,” Joan Franks, Mabel’s grandmother, told the television station.

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Mabel was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when she was 14 months old, KARE reported. Most of her treatments were administered intravenously, but Sunday night’s final treatment was a pill.

Relatives watched and cheered on a video chat as Mabel swallowed the medicine.

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“It’s really all she’s known, since she was 14 months old, she’s been going through treatments,” Mabel’s mother, Meagan Franks, told KARE. “I’m just really grateful and we’ve had an amazing support system as you can see. It’s very emotional.”

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