July 11, 2004. First confirmed mention of John “JS” Dirr on the internet. He’s a member of a band who plays around the UCLA campus. John is 21 with a 3 year old, a murdered brother, a fixation on hockey and a love for Tom Delonge from Blink 182. (Emily Dirr is fourteen years old, and boy can you tell if you look at the list of “the band’s” recordings).
On that page, “the band” adds this disclaimer to the bottom of their pages.
May 12, 2006. “JS” joins Yahoo! Answers. First questions asked are about cities in Canada, baby name choices, and a request for opinions about a song “he” wrote about the death of his brother. Baby “Eli” is about to be born and of course every Canadian cop slash hockey bad boy slash womanizer needs the internet’s advice on what to call his son.
October 3, 2006. Cliff Elias “Eli” Dirr is born. He has a Wilms Tumor and JS immediately turns to Yahoo! Answers to find out more information.
Eli is JS’ seventh child, joining Tim, 5, Kyle, 4, Dougie, 3, Katie, 17 months and Markus and Mattias, nearly 1 year old twins, All of the children’s mothers are not active in their lives, and Eli’s mother soon follows suit. :
(Emily is 16 years old).
Around this time, a CaringBridge site is started for Eli’s cancer journey. It is updated often, is extremely picture heavy and includes tidbits about the development of all the children.
Eli’s cancer goes into remission.
2008: Around this same time, JS meets and marries Dana. She’s a sweet trauma surgeon who has been told she can’t have children.
Miraculously, she almost immediately becomes pregnant with twins. They are born over three months early, but they survive and thrive. The twins, JS’ second set, are his eighth and ninth children. He is 25 years old.
December of 2008: Eli, in remission for two years, is diagnosed with a secondary cancer, AML Leukemia. The whole family joins in solidarity with their warrior. Updates on Eli’s CaringBridge page, JS’ Xanga journal and a blog on his MySpace are updated frequently.
2009: Eli’s spleen was removed. He undergoes chemotherapy. At the end of the year, Eli is again in remission.
2010: Unfortunately, Eli relapses again, and now he has an untyped mass in his liver.
The family begins sending out bracelets to raise awareness of Eli’s cancer fight.
Eli eventually goes into remission from his Leukemia but is diagnosed with a Stage III Hepatoblastoma.
Dana gives birth to JS’ tenth child, a baby boy named Jack.
2011: Eli goes into remission from the Hepatoblastoma. Dana becomes pregnant again.
January of 2012: JS suffers from heart problems and nearly dies in the hospital. The family keeps over a thousand Facebook fans update on his progress. He eventually recovers.
March 2012: Eli again relapses.
April of 2012: JS and two of his children are involved in a car accident. They are hit by a semi and the driver was both drunk and texting.
May of 2012: Dana officially adopts many of JS’ children from his many previous relationships.
Friday, May 11th. Dana posts her last Facebook update.
The rest of the story is summarized here.
