Influencer Nara Smith was overcome with emotion when her 2-year-old daughter, Whimsy, finished her cancer treatment.
“Right after her birthday, she was in remission,” Smith, 24, recalled on the Wednesday, July 29, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “We finished her last treatment, we rang the bell [and] it was very emotional.”
Nara and her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, announced earlier in July that Whimsy had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of childhood cancer. Weeks later, the couple confirmed that their daughter is in remission. (Nara and Lucky Blue, 28, also share son Slim, 4, and daughters Rumble, 5, and Fawnie, 9 months. Lucky is also the father of daughter Gravity, 8, from his past relationship with Stormi Bree Henley.)
Nara and Lucky opted against sharing Whimsy’s diagnosis until she finished treatment.
“It took a lot,” Nara emotionally revealed to podcast host Alex Cooper. “I mean, it all boiled down to when we found out about everything and then all the behind the scenes and everything that was going on. Lucky and I did have those conversations and I always had this lingering fear [of] ‘What if someone takes a video of us in the hospital and they put it out?’”
Nara continued, “To me, [Whimsy’s] safety and privacy was the most important thing. I would always go back and forth with Lucky, saying, ‘Should we just share it? Should we just talk about it? What if someone else does?’ He’s like, ‘That doesn’t matter. What do you feel in your heart?’ I always came back to the fact, like, ‘I don’t want to share it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want her out there.’”
As she strived to keep Whimsy’s diagnosis private, the influencer found solace and a community in other parents navigating similar situations.
“I just realized, ‘Well, maybe if I use my platform to make even just one person feel less alone, I can do that.’ That’s kind of why we shared it,” Nara stated, adding it was “really hard” to publicly announce Whimsy’s health battle.
Nara and Lucky initially found out that their daughter had cancer months earlier.
“We were actually coming back from a big family photo shoot, the holiday one, and my mother-in-law, she talked to Lucky and she was like, ‘I saw this thing, don’t be alarmed, but maybe you should look at it and talk to Nara about it,’” Nara recalled on Wednesday’s episode. “We took her to the ER. They [were] like, ‘We don’t really know what to make of this. Just tell us if it gets worse.’ I was like, ‘OK, well, maybe it’s just a kid thing. I don’t know.’ So then later that week, I took Fawnie to the pediatrician for the first time. I rang him and I was like, ‘This is what’s going on with Whimsy. Do you think I can bring her to just have a look?’ We walk in there and he does her first, he looks at her and then I just remember him going quiet. He went quiet and, like, very calm and collected. And, in that moment, my heart just dropped.”
Without disclosing further details, the family’s pediatrician told Nara and Lucky to take Whimsy to the closest children’s hospital right away.
“A week after that initial visit, we got a phone call and I just remember standing in the living room and the phone rang and it was this weird gut feeling,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s the hospital. They’re going to tell us she has cancer.’ I looked at Lucky and I’m like, ‘This is it. Let’s just brace ourselves and it’s cancer.’ You could just tell by the voice and they were like, ’We’re so sorry. She has cancer. You guys need to start treatment immediately,’ and then they took her in.”
While undergoing treatment, Whimsy was subjected to further tests as doctors found out that the cancerous tissue had “spread in her body.”
“It was really hard,” Nara said. “Lucky, kind of, did the majority of [work watching her] ‘cause you would go home and then she would go to the hospital for five days and stay there for Monday to Friday every 16ish days depending on what her blood count was. Lucky did those overnight stays because I had Fawnie at home, [whom] I was nursing, and I couldn’t be away from her. I would go [to the hospital] during the day and then, obviously, try to also work and do that. It was like playing Tetris almost, and then we had our other kids.”
She continued, “It was really hard and it was a really tough experience and every day you would wake up and not quite know what the day is going to bring, what the doctors are going to say, [if] the treatment is working [or] is it not?”
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