You can't help but smile when you're around 3-year-old Jireh.

“Jireh is very adventurous,” his mother — Renee Santos — said. “He loves to be running around, jumping, bouncing off the sofas with his sister.”

Jireh your typical preschooler doing what every kid his age should be doing.

In 2024, Jireh and his parents got news nobody should ever get.

“He was diagnosed with a germ cell tumor, which was on his heart, and it wasn't normally where these tumors grow,” Renee said.

Jireh's parents were caught off guard by the diagnosis, and said hearing the word “cancer” was heart-wrenching.

“It's a scary word,” Renee said. “A lot of people hear it and immediately think they're going to die, it's a really heavy word."

Jireh also had to undergo open-heart surgery. Following the surgery, Jireth underwent four additional rounds of chemotherapy that he finished in June, right before his birthday, Renee said.

Renee said she is grateful for the doctors and staff at the Vannie Cook Clinic in McAllen for offering advanced treatments and diagnostics from Texas Children's Hospital in Houston and the Baylor College of Medicine.

The clinic is the only pediatric and hematology center in South Texas.

Dr. Rodrigo Eraña is a pediatric hematology and oncology specialist at Vannie Cook.

The clinic has treated more than 10,000 patients in the last 20 years.

Before it was founded, families had to travel out of the Rio Grande Valley for cancer treatments.

“We need to do this here, we don't need to have patients drive 200 miles to get their treatment,” Eraña said. 

Jireh's story is one that many families across the country go through.

Health experts say one in 260 kids will have cancer before they turn 20.

Only through research are cures discovered and children's lives saved.

Click here to donate to the Vannie E. Cook Jr. Cancer Foundation.

Watch the video above for the full story.