Monkey Business can sometimes be a serious matter. Thankfully, the opposite is also true: serious matters can be Monkey Business.

Monkey Business is a local support group — the program gets its name from the stuffed toy monkey that each child receives to bond with — run through Emanuel Medical Center. It helps children who have a family member being treated for a chronic illness, or who are undergoing treatment themselves.

The program is free for kids ages 4 through 17, and is held every other Monday in the EMC conference rooms from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Though the meetings are designed to be fun, with stories, games, crafts and snacks, there’s also an opportunity for kids to talk about the illness affecting their lives. And while kids interact in one room, parents meet in another to offer support and encouragement to one another.

It was founded by former kindergarten teacher Nancy Daley, a concierge at Emanuel Cancer Center when that facility opened in 2008.

“Because of being a teacher, I saw some real needs for the kids whose parents and grandparents were battling cancer,” said Daley, who also worked as sort of a private tutor for Jessica Everett, the late cancer patient for whom Jessica’s House is named. “They just needed extra support. And being with Jessica for three years, I was able to see what UCSF did with her — all the activities, the art, the play, the books — and that’s what got me motivated to start Monkey Business.”

Currently, there are seven families — 15 children — being served by the program, which came to a standstill during the pandemic and is still trying to regain its pre-2020 footing.

But for those currently enrolled, the program has been a light in the fog.

“We were hit hard,” said Chanelle McLaughlin, who discovered she had an aggressive form of breast cancer not long after her husband, Josh, was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma in October 2023. “My first instinct was, of course, my husband. But after that, it was, ‘What can I do for my boys and how can I support them’”

The McLaughlins have four sons — 11-year-old Major, 9-year-old Mack, and 7-year-old twins Jones and Jennings.

“We do every sport and activity under the sun, from 4-H, to football, baseball, soccer, swimming … everything,” said McLaughlin. “And the thing they look forward to the most is Monkey Business.”

The program helped foster a sense of continuity for the boys at a time when they felt adrift.

“I could sense fear and uncertainty with them, especially with both  of us being sick,” said McLaughlin. “We’ve always had a beautiful life, and our world just stopped. Coming to Monkey Business was something that we had on our family calendar that they looked forward to and they knew they could be with people going through similar things. It was their community.”

Lauren Denton is the mother of 6-year-old Elyse, who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 1.

“The support I’ve received and the friendships I’ve made will last a lifetime,” said Denton.

Elyse still enjoys coming to Monkey Business get-togethers for the fun.

“We do arts and crafts and we’re nice to each other and we do a group circle and we play outside,” said Elyse, a first-grader at Julien Elementary School. “And we say who had cancer or not. I had cancer.”

The ribbon for childhood cancer is gold, whereas the ribbon for breast cancer is famously pink, while the ribbon for prostate cancer is light blue. Elyse sees her type of cancer as “golden.”

But she’s feeling fine these days.

“Mmhmm, because I don’t have cancer anymore,” said Elyse, who then proudly displayed the scar below her right collarbone where her chemo port once was.

Because Elyse was so young, she doesn’t remember much about her battle against the disease.

“Mom, tell him,” she prompted her mother, before she turned back to the reporter and said, “She remembers.”

Denton, an ICU nurse, remembers all too well. She recounted the harrowing story of the up-and-down fever — eventually topping out at 107.7 — that led doctors to suspect this wasn’t just a virus.

The family was sent to Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera, and checked into the ER. Elyse’s blood was drawn and a peripheral smear showed abnormal cells inside her bone marrow.

“What are you telling me right now?” Denton remembered asking doctors in Madera, getting choked up at the memory. “I came in because my daughter had a fever and now you’re putting her in the oncology unit?”

Though the struggle is in the past, Lauren and Elyse, along with big brother Andy, remain part of the Monkey Business family.

“Until the kids tell me they’ve grown out of it, or until they have the tools and adequate support, we’ll continue,” said Denton. “I think they like the comfortability of cancer not being a taboo word. They can talk with others and say, ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean.’ They have peers … in a club nobody wants to be in. But here we are.”

To find out more about Monkey Business, email Daley at nancy.daley@tenethealth.com or co-coordinator Kim Meredith at kimberly.meredith@tenethealth.com