Kimberly

Kim was diagnosed with AML Leukemia on July 22, 2009, just after she finished high school. She'd been feeling well, just showing a few bruises when she went to Primary Childrens Medical Center for a heart surgery to fix a relatively minor condition she's had since she was born. A blood test before the surgery showed that her blood had been completely taken over by the cancer. They admitted her that day and began treatment right away. She went through five long rounds of chemotherapy, doing relatively well, with the exception of one infection that led to a very scary stay in the Pediatric ICU. She spent almost all of that time in the hospital, with just a few breaks to go home. By the end of March 2010 she was allowed to go home for good- officially in remission! She was so excited to finally go to USU Fall semester, and got strait A's in all of her classes! Psychology, Humanities, Family Finance and ANATOMY. Not a week after finals, at a regular check up at PCMC, her blood tests showed that her cancer was back. And thus began round two- Kim's goal was to make it to a bone marrow transplant. We had found a donor, so all that was left was to get her in remission once more. After three rounds of chemotherapy, her body was no longer strong enough to keep fighting, no matter that her spirit was. She will always be with us. 7:48 pm, March 31, 2011

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

in the PICU

Hey, it's Emily. I am down at Primary Children's. As I said before I came down, it looks like Kim will be in the intensive care unit longer (they call it PICU: "pick-you" because it is actually the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.) We had to move everything out of her other room, and we've packed most of it into my car to bring back to Logan. We can't really stay the night with her, so both mom and I will be coming back, and Mom will probably come down again in the morning.
Right now they are changing the charges in Kim's room, so we aren't allowed to be there, for about an hour. I was able to go in earlier though and spend some time with her. I guess she is technically doing okay, but it's pretty hard to see her like this. She is breathing really fast, and may still have fluid sitting on her lungs. They have her hooked up to so many machines: to monitor her breathing, oxygen level, heartrate, heart pressure (a line going into her heart- because of her murmer etc that have been issues before), potassium level, blood pressure, etc. They are giving her oxygen, potassium, saline, platelets now and then, blood pressure medication, antibiotics, antifungals, antinausea... etc.
As I said, she is breathing quickly, is very tired, sometimes has pain in her abdomen, and is very confused- to the point of being delirious. So it's hard to see her this way, especially because we still don't really know how she's doing overall. They've done CAT scans and echocardiograms on her today, to see what's going on. We should know in the morning how things are working.
Really, I should just focus on the fact that SHE IS GOING TO BE FINE. Two of our favorite nurses in the ICU came down and gave her a blessing tonight. This is so hard, but I'm sure she'll pull through soon.
I took a couple of pictures, and will try to get them posted now. Once again, as always, thank you for praying for her.
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