- Hello and welcome to Living In The Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

Pediatric cancer is a hard pill to swallow for any family.

So when a first-time Lehigh Valley mom found out her six-month-old was diagnosed, she felt shocked and alone.

Now, that mother is sharing a book she penned about her experience, hoping to give some comfort to others going through the same thing.

Shari Ann Almeida was thrilled when her daughter was born in October of 2018.

- Dakota came into the world bright and shiny and making sure she was known to the room.

- But not all has been bright and shiny in this tiny little girl's four years of life.

- I did notice a few pinpoint purple dots, as if you were to take a pen and just kind of make little dots.

There were four or five right on the bottom of her cheek, where your cheek meets your hamstring.

- Almeida says a few other odd symptoms cropped up over the first few months of her baby's life, like night sweats, low grade fevers and a runny nose.

She chalked it all up to teething, but at Dakota's six-month checkup, she was sent for bloodwork.

And the Almeidas' lives changed forever.

- It was pre B-cell infantile leukemia.

And so we showed up at Lehigh Valley Hospital and this, again, was April 24th, 2019.

We didn't walk out again until June.

Almeida's daughter was placed in a rare category because of her age, and a treatment plan was set into motion.

We were told right from the beginning, "We're going to throw the kitchen sink at her," which is exactly how they put it, which means every God awful thing, God awful form of poison that they could possibly come up with was going to be pumped into Dakota.

And the goal, the reason for doing that, was to hopefully get her cancer to a point where it could be controlled without other interventions.

- Spending the next few months in a Lehigh Valley Health Network hospital room, Almeida says she felt isolated and lonely until she had an idea.

- I wrote motivational messages and told the people I was praying for them, and then the nurses would hand them out to the other mothers on the floor.

- Little did she know she was laying the groundwork for a book and building a community of parents.

- I was enduring this hell.

And I had no idea that night if my child was going to be alive.

And I kept thinking, "If I'm feeling this way, "she's got to be feeling this way, too," and I wish somebody was able to come hug me and tell me they can see me and that we're not invisible.

- In the months since then, she's met other parents of pediatric cancer patients and formed a support group, both in person and on social media.

The group is called Warrior Moms United by Pediatric Cancer.

- With Shari, I found a place where I can just listen to her and relate.

- Marilyn Mendez Maldonado has become one of Almeida's closest confidants and co-founder of the group.

- My role can range from cooking, delivering, picking up, watching a cancer mom's child while she's in treatment with her other child.

- The two met when Mendez Maldonado's son, Jacob, was fighting his own war with childhood cancer.

- He was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma.

It's not like leukemia or anything like that.

It's a cancer that attacks the muscle tissue.

His tumor was found on the right eye, on the eyelid.

Once Jacob was in remission, that cancer came back and he fought it a second time.

Since then, the mom-of-three has dedicated her life to helping Almeida's cause and giving back to other moms in similar situations, never knowing when she will need the help again.

- He was diagnosed with optic nerve disease and he was hospitalized for about a week.

And it was scary because we thought his cancer was going to come back.

And Shari put it together.

She's like, "Marilyn needs our help."

I had to miss work.

I'm a single mom.

I'm doing this by myself.

And they gathered money for me, gift cards, that I was able to stay away from work for two weeks and not worry, "How am I going to pay my rent?

How am I going to pay my bills?

"How am I going to supply?"

They helped me.

- It's for people like Mendez Maldonado that Almeida decided to write about her own journey, letting others know they are not alone.

- All it is is saying to another cancer mom, "I'm going to find other cancer moms "that you can connect with," because there's nobody that sees you like another woman who is exactly like you.

- With Dakota 21 months in remission.

Almeida is looking to the future, hoping fear won't weigh her down.

- There will never be a day that I don't think about my child's mortality.

There will never be a day that I don't fear her cancer coming back.

And unfortunately, there will never be a day that she lives here on Earth where she won't live with the same fear.

- But she's taking that fear and turning it into motivation, not just for herself and her daughter, but the community of people fighting childhood cancer.

- Come here, I want to show you something!

What is that right there?

- Mommy's book.

- Mommy's book!

The author of I See You released her book earlier this year and is now on a book tour, with her four-year-old in tow.

The petite mom-of-one is now meeting those inspired by the story of her little blonde ball of energy.

- Many will say that this book is extremely dark, and it is.

It's a punch in the gut, and it's on purpose because that is what it was.

But standing right here and being right here now, there is light, there is hope.

I will talk about it.

I will show everyone the light.

And even though more darkness may come, there is light and we're embracing that.

- I See You was released earlier this year and is available in bookstores and online.

That will do it for this edition of Living In The Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.