Thank you for supporting me and the more than 300,000 kids worldwide who will be diagnosed with cancer this year. By sharing the gifts of your time, talent and money with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, you're supporting research to give all kids with cancer a better chance for a cure. Back in February of this year, we started to notice Lyanna having a “white glow” in her left eye. In certain lighting, sunlight and photos. I really didn’t know what it could have been, or was becoming, but it was definitely not normal. A couple of weeks later we took her to see an ophthalmologist at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and they confirmed it was bilateral retinoblastoma. Retinoblastoma is a rare type of eye cancer, but is most common in children between 2-5. My sweet baby girl has cancer and we had no idea. Thankfully the amazing doctors acted quickly and got her in for interarterial chemotherapy and things started looking better, but still had some challenges. It has been 7 months of treatment and chemo shots, but unfortunately we have to have her left eye removed.
A week after her surgery, we noticed she was just not feeling well. Very sad, not eating, tired and irritable. Something told me this isn’t right. We were told that most kids bounce back immediately after surgery since it is a huge amount of pain gone. She started to develop a fever and we took her right to the ER. The doctors ran tests, did X-rays, blood work etc. They couldn’t figure it out, so they did an MRI and it confirmed that the cancer had spread. We were absolutely shocked and devastated. How could this have happened when we took out the part that made her sick? With further scans, they discovered the cancer had spread to her brain, spine, bone marrow, liver, lymph nodes and blood. We started systemic chemotherapy immediately and it was one of the scariest thing to ever have to see your child go through. She luckily recovered and now is finishing up her 3rd round of chemo. It has been a rough few months, but her recent scans have shown a lot of improvement in her brain and is clear of her bone marrow, and certain areas in her lymph nodes. Chemotherapy is not easy on these kids but knowing that it is possible to make this all go away and have her back to normal, makes it a bit easier. We have a very long road ahead of us, but it is truly amazing how this little girl is fighting so hard.
She is so strong and we can’t even imagine how she feels with all of this happening to her, but nothing has stopped this girl from being so amazing and wonderful.
