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

Monday, January 11, 2010

Hey Everyone- Chrismas may not be too far away! Kim is still doing better, bit by bit, and this morning she was able to come off of the feeding tube, and one of her antibiotics. Her ANC has been at 400 since yesterday. They are going to keep an eye on her for a while more, and if she keeps looking good, and her ANC gets to at least 500, they might have her come home for the rest of her recovery. They're still not sure that they have the infection totally out of the way- so she's still on a lot of other antibiotics, but getting her off of vancomiacin was really good. She was mildly allergic to it, so she had to be premedicated with benadryl and tylenol before she could take it, and it runs for at least four hours- and she has to take it three times a day. This means a lot less time being hooked up to her IV pole, as most of her other meds only take a half hour or so.
Getting the NG/ Feeding tube out was probably the best thing for Kim. It was always kind of irritating to have going down her nose and throat. But it is going to be hard for her to keep up on the calories now. She has still been losing even more weight every day, so that's one of the things they are still closely watching. And she still has bedsores that are far from healing. But she's going to do her best, and I know she will be great.
Thank you so much for still keeping her in your thoughts and prayers. She still has such a long way to go, but it certainly does make me feel great seeing her do a little better every day.
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