Maryland Trek
with Justin Berk
Age: 2
Type of Cancer: Neuroblastoma (relapsed)
Treatment Status: In remission; officially completed treatment May 2026
Maverick has been fighting cancer for almost his entire life. His parents, Jon and Megan, had been married for just over a year with a four-month-old when Megan noticed unusual bumps on his skin. The pediatrician's watchful eye led to a dermatology referral, and then a diagnosis that stopped the world: neuroblastoma. Scans found tumors along the lining of his brain and spinal cord, and Maverick began eight rounds of chemotherapy as an intermediate-risk patient before he could crawl.
He responded remarkably. Two rounds in, his tumors were already shrinking. He finished treatment before his first birthday, and that October his scans came back clear. Then, at his very first follow-up in January, doctors found a mass behind his eye—and neuroblastoma in his bone marrow. Maverick had relapsed, and this time he would be treated as high risk: five rounds of high-dose chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants, twelve rounds of radiation, and five rounds of immunotherapy, stretched across fifteen months.
Once again, Maverick rose to the challenge. The first five rounds of chemo knocked the cancer out entirely. To his doctors’ amazement, he was cancer free going into his stem cell transplants. His scans have been clear since May of last year, and this June the family got the words they'd been waiting for: end of treatment. Remission.
The cost to the family was enormous. They moved from Virginia back to Maryland to be near family, living with Megan's parents at first. Megan stepped away from her career to be Maverick's full-time caregiver; Jon stepped down as an active partner in his business. In the last fifteen months of treatment alone, Jon counted more than a hundred nights in the hospital for him and a hundred days for Megan. “Everything felt like there was no stability,” Jon said. “All you care about is your kid getting better. The rest will be figured out.”
What carried them was faith—a pastor who drove an hour just to sit with them on diagnosis day, and a verse they clung to: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” And what carried them was Maverick himself: strong-willed, independent, and, in his parents' favorite word, relentless. Even on “bed days” during stem cell, watching Trash Truck with little toys in his lap, he just kept coming back. “He wanted to play. He wanted to be a kid,” Jon said. “He never really seemed to see it as anything else. He just rolled with it.”
The journey rewrote how they see ordinary life. “Most days are like Tuesdays—they're kind of just boring,” Jon said. “But we have had a lot more joy in the mundane. A lot more gratitude that things could look different.”
Just In Power Kids helped with parking passes, meals, and financial support at a time when a single income was stretched across moves, new jobs, and deductible after deductible. “It goes a long way,” Jon said, “to feel like there are people who were complete strangers to us, and they're going to give a rip about our child and our story and our lives.”
Maverick turns three in October—and becomes a big brother again in November, with a baby sister due two days after Thanksgiving. His family will be there on his Trek day, cheering. Their advice to families just starting out: “It's trekking through a valley, not driving down a road. Celebrate the wins, don't get buried in the losses of the day—and find your people, because you can't get through this alone.”
