Nurse arranges a plane so a dying father could see his son play football during his last days

In early August, 50-year-old Scott Sullivan of Somerset, Kentucky, was diagnosed with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare form of cancer. He was admitted to the hospital after his lab results displayed some abnormalities. Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis is a complication of cancer in which the disease spreads to the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. As per the National Institutes of Health, patients do not have long to live once they contract the disease. Even with treatment, overall survival is only two to four months on average. Doctors gave Sullivan two weeks to live and promptly discharged him to hospice care. When his nurse found out he desperately wanted to watch his son Cade Sullivan play the first football game of his sophomore year at Pulaski County High School, she did everything in her power to ensure it happens, CNN reports.

Sullivan's nurse, Jerree Humphrey of Hospice of Lake Cumberland, had developed a close friendship with him quite quickly. Coincidentally, both of them have children around the same age who play sports at rival schools. Though she wanted to oblige his request, she originally did not recommend traveling to his son's school for his football game. This is especially because the match was an away game, scheduled to take place in Belfry, which is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. It would have definitely been impractical for a hospice patient. Humphrey explained, "I thought you know you're talking seven or eight hours in the car and I said I don't know how safe that would be or how realistic."

However, the nurse was not satisfied with denying Sullivan the privilege of watching his son's football game. So, she reached out to a local airport to see what she could do. Soon enough, Dr. Denny Brummett, a local dentist, offered to fly the patient to the game—on his personal plane, no less. Of course, the father was absolutely overcome with joy. "Words could not be put into sentences or phrases to describe how I felt at that time," he shared. "I was just so happy to see my son." On September 11, Dr. Brummett kept his word. He, along with Sullivan, Sullivan's girlfriend, and Humphrey boarded the dentist's plane to Belfry on game day.

When the group arrived, as an extra precaution, they sat on a hill far away from the rest of the attendees. And when Sullivan's son saw him at the game, he ran all the way up the hill and hugged him as tight as he could. The emotional father said it was a magical moment as they were able to create a memory that "his son will always be able to remember when he's gone." Humphrey said of the moment, "You could just not help but cry. He just embraced him so hard and was just so thankful for him to be there." Now, Sullivan hopes to make it to his son's next football game on Saturday.