WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — The Cy-Hawk rivalry always provides a good game on the field, but there are even bigger battles being fought outside Kinnick Stadium at the nearby Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Those patients are honored at each home game by Kid Captains. This week’s Kid Captain, Atlas Coleman from West Des Moines, shows us what toughness truly looks like.
Neal and Stacy Coleman have photos of what life used to look like for their son Atlas.
“He’s going to be one strong resilient little boy,” Neal Coleman reflected.
Atlas was 15-months-old when a trip to the emergency room led to an X-ray that found a cyst on his lung. His parents decided to take him to Iowa City to get it removed.
“We did,” Stacy Coleman said. “And it saved our son’s life, there’s no question about that.”
But surgery was just the start of their son’s journey.
“After the biopsy, we found out that he was diagnosed with pleuropulmonary blastoma, which is a really rare type of pediatric lung cancer,” Stacy Coleman explained.