When then-3-year-old Clayton Moorse’s parents tried dressing him in a shirt he wore only a few weeks earlier, they couldn’t pull it over his tummy.
“His belly definitely had that toddler pooch going on, which had not been abnormal for him,” dad Cody Moorse, of Dallas, tells TODAY.com. “We’d see that and then we’d see a growth spurt and he’d lean back up and go through that cycle (again). This one never went away and became more pronounced.”
Worried about Clayton’s “asymmetrical” belly, they visited their pediatrician and Clayton underwent testing, which revealed that the toddler had a Wilms tumor, a kidney cancer that occurs in children.
“We were swimming in a pool of really not pleasant thoughts,” Cody Moorse says. “Thinking on it today is still difficult.”
Severe belly bloating
Clayton, now 6, has always been full of energy. In the fall of 2021, he was “running around,” playing with Ninja Turtles and decorating pumpkins for Halloween like any rambunctious child. Right before Halloween, Clayton appeared to be his normal self. But a few weeks later, his belly looked distended. Mom Lauren Moorse noticed a difference after she returned from a trip in mid-November.
“When she got back, she is like, ‘His stomach’s definitely bigger, and now the left side looks a little asymmetrical to the right,’” Cody Moorse recalls. They called their pediatrician’s office, and a nurse asked the parents some questions about Clayton’s health. But he was eating like he always did and having normal bowel movements, so the nurse advised them to watch him for a few days. The Monday after Thanksgiving, Clayton visited the pediatrician.
“(The doctor) starts feeling around on Clayton’s abdomen and pretty immediately he’s like, ‘There’s a mass there,’” Cody Moorse says. “A couple of minutes later he’s like I’d like you to go to (the hospital).”
Once at Children’s Health in Dallas, Clayton underwent a CT scan, which found a “tumor attached to his left kidney.” The family was stunned.
“He was living a normal rough and tumble 3-year-old boy life,” Lauren Moorse tells TODAY.com. “He was having no symptoms.”
While they had been worried about his distended abdomen, they thought it might have had to do with his stomach or intestines.
“Just seeing his belly grow at some point you’re like well there’s got to be something going on,” Cody Moorse says. “In my mind, I was like ‘I hope it’s not a blockage.’”
Doctors recommended surgery to remove the mass, which was larger than a grapefruit. The Wilms tumor appeared “really fragile,” much like a water balloon, Cody Moorse says. Doctors worried about it breaking.
“If it had ruptured before they go in there or it ruptures while they’re trying to remove it, all that spillage because an area of treatment,” he says. Should that “because” say something else? “We were hoping he was going to be able to avoid radiation but if it spilled, he was going to have to have pretty pervasive radiation up and down his body.”
While doctors were surprised by the size of the tumor, they did remove it in one piece, an “answered prayer” for the family.
“When they got it out, the tumor was almost one and a half times bigger than what they thought,” Cody Moorse says. “His tumor had what they called aggressive characteristics.”
Anything it touched in Clayton’s body, including his stomach, lungs or other internal organs, could also develop cancer. Doctors thought it would be best if the boy underwent six rounds of radiation after Clayton recovered from surgery. Following radiation, he started chemotherapy for two and a half months. He experienced few side effects from treatment, though before his last round of chemotherapy, Clayton seemed uncharacteristically lethargic.
“That really knocked him down,” Lauren Moorse says. “(Chemotherapy) compounds over time and the last one is usually rough … His blood counts were high enough for us to get that very last chemo. It actually had to be delayed a couple of times.”
While Clayton’s cancer diagnosis was scary for his parents, they spoke optimistically about treatment.
“We never said, ‘Oh, the medicine is making you feel sick. The medicine is making your hair fall out.’ Because we never wanted him to associate it negatively with going to Children’s,” Lauren Moorse says. “The whole experience was very positive from his view.”
Child life specialists helped also Clayton cope and explained the scar across his abdomen was like the emblem a superhero wears on their chest. That helped his parents look at their son’s cancer differently.
“We were like OK we’re going to build this around his bravery and his positivity,” Cody Moorse says. “Our oncologist told us very early on that he’s going to feed off your emotions. So, if you stay positive it will be a positive experience.”
Wilms tumor
A Wilms tumor is the “most common type of kidney tumor in children,” explains Dr. Samir Pandya, one of Clayton’s doctors.
“It’s unique to children so adults don’t get Wilms tumors,” the pediatric general surgeon at Children’s Health and Professor of Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center tells TODAY.com. “It’s typically found in babies or children who are under 9 years old.”
Historically Wilms tumors were “universally fatal,” but progress in treatments, including surgical techniques, chemotherapy and radiation has changed the prognosis for the 500 to 800 children in the United States diagnosed with them annually, Pandya says. While it’s unclear why children develop them, ongoing research is looking at the mechanism behind Wilms tumors.
“There are certain syndromes that children may have which Wilms is one of the presentations,” Pandya says. “But if the child does not have a syndrome, then it’s spontaneous.”
Many children are diagnosed with a Wilms tumor after their parents notice swelling or a bump in their abdomens just like Clayton.
“In general, those children are not coming in looking deathly ill,” Pandya says. “Everything seems to be going along in their lives, and they suddenly feel this (mass).”
He says other symptoms include:
- Blood in urine
- Excessive vomiting
- Inability to eat
“That should all prompt an evaluation by their pediatrician,” Pandya says. “But most commonly it’s discovering what we term as an asymptomatic abdominal mass.”
Treatment includes surgery followed by chemotherapy or radiation if the tumor has spread or ruptured. Pandya admires the Moorse family’s strength as they navigated Clayton’s diagnosis and treatment.
“Clayton’s a superhero,” he says. “What we put them through, surgery as well as chemotherapy. We put them through a lot and for them to go through that and come out the other end with a positive attitude that he has (is heroic).”
‘Just the best attitude’
Clayton will gladly pull up his shirt to show off the half-moon-shaped scar across his abdomen. He’s “excessively proud” of it.
“We are, too, and everything it stands for,” Cody Moorse says. “He had such a great attitude about having cancer that as his parents you’ve got no choice but to meet him at his level. To this day, when he’s got to go in for checkups or anything else he runs into the hospital with a smile on his face.”
Since finishing chemotherapy in the summer of 2022, Clayton has been healthy. At first, he went for follow-up scans every 12 weeks but now he returns every year to make sure the cancer has not returned. His parents are impressed by how strong their son was.
“He’s so resilient. He had just the best attitude,” Cody Moorse says. “One of the things I’ve learned from him is that we all go through tough times sometimes … your attitude and how you face adversity really can have a pretty dramatic impact on what that process to deal with that adversity looks like.”
With Clayton’s diagnosis and treatment, the Morse family learned that pediatric cancer research lacks funding. About 4% of federal research budget is dedicated to pediatric cancer, past TODAY.com reporting notes. The family has been fundraising to help doctors develop a better understanding and treatments for pediatric cancers.