Stories of Lost Children
Lost My 4 Year Old from AML 24 Hours After Diagnosis
by Dawn, Thonotosassa, FL, U.S.A.
Caylee was 4 years old when she passed and was completely full of life. She loved any kind of animal, was nice to everyone, gave besitos to all of her family, played with her brother and sister, gave hugs and valentines to mommy, entertained me, danced with me, shopped with me, fished with papa, did back bends with papa, flips with papa and hide and seek in the house. There was never a bad moment, never a bad memory, except the one where she died. I loved Caylee so very much and did as much as I could for her always. Caylee comes from the word Katherine, which means - PURE. --- and she sure was. A fragile, graceful, loving child who cared so much for others that she would forget about the things a child should care about. Anyone that met her or saw her felt all of the love that Caylee had bottled up inside that little body and desired so much to share that with her. We will all miss Caylee and will meet her again when it is our time to be with her. Caylee was not sick prior to those two weeks. All of my children had an upper respitory infection and had been to the doctor's the week prior and put on Zithromax. She was over the cough and on day 7 of the Zithromax, she got a low grade fever. She was still playing and acting like a healthy kid. That was March 3rd. We had been for a field trip to the Fire Station the day before. On March 4th, she had some vomiting. Immediately, I thought stomach virus. The next day, the 5th, I took her to Healthpoint After Hours Pediatrics and they diagnosed her with a Stomach Virus. I took her home, let her sleep the next day and Monday, the 7th, when she looked worse, I took her to her Pediatrician. He immediately diagnosed it as Leukemia. We were devastated. He told us this is not a death sentence like it used to be. We took her to the Children's Cancer Center and they aspirated blood from her marrow and diagnosed early as ALL with a 80% chance of survival. The next morning the final results came in and it was not ALL, but AML and now the prognosis was 40% with Chemo. My whole world seemed to end at that moment. The Oncologist gave us her road map and said it would mean 10 days of Chemo and then more treatments lasting 2 1/2 years and then she may not recover and may need a bone marrow transplant and then still could relapse and eventually die. I asked if she would walk out of there now and he was certain she would. With 20 years + of experience, they had never seen or expected anything like this. Her WBC was 283,000 and when they started pheresis it came down momentarily and then went back up while they were treating. This baffled them. They told me after they had to put a ventilator in that she probably was not going to make it through the night and that the had to resuscitate her. I told them to keep trying. I did not want to fail her in any way. The Father from church was there and he said, "The last bit of love you can give her is to let her go." I knew he was right when the 7+ bags of blood they were trying to get in her started coming back out. She was bleeding to death, so I had to make a decision to let her go before she did. The Hematologists said that would be far worse if that happened. I could not bare to do that to her. So, I told them to disconnect her and give her to me. I held her for a long time. I touched her little feet and hands and rubbed her tummy that had hurt so much and kissed her. I told her that I was so sorry that this happened to her and that I loved being her mommy and that I was lucky to have had that opportunity. In November, her class made cards for Thanksgiving. Hers said she wanted to thank Papa for taking her fishing, mommy for buying her things and Jesus for giving her TV. The last thing she said was, "Papa, I want to watch TV." I want to think that Jesus or an Angel was standing there telling her whenever she was ready to go home just say it. I think it was her way of saying to us she was ready. She closed her eyes and did not open them or speak again. I truly believe she was already gone. Visit www.cayleesheart.com
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