Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Kinslee's story

On October 16th 2013 Kinslee was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) at 2 years old.  She had been having some leg pain that starting waking her up during the night. I just assumed it was growing pains. Then her foot looked really swollen all of a sudden so I decided to take her to the doctor. The doctor was concerned and ordered blood work to test for West Nile and Mono. Those came back negative and her CBC looked normal except that it showed she was very anemic. Then her elbow and hand started to look swollen so the doctor ordered more blood work to test for inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The inflammation came back positive so the doctor contacted a rheumatologist at Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth and she reviewed Kinslee's chart and ordered more blood work to test for rheumatic fever. They thought she might have had a strep infection that went untreated. She also ordered another CBC and that was what brought us to where we are now. Her WBC was very abnormal.  Our doctor had us come into his office ASAP and I knew something was wrong. I walked in and no one could look at me. The doctor walked in asked if there was any way I could get in touch with my husband Clay (who was in New Mexico hunting at the time) and then gave me the worst news of my life. I had my suspicions all along but nothing can prepare you for something like this. It was devastating to hear that my baby girl was so sick. The doctor comforted me and said a prayer with us before we left. Then we headed home to pack our bags to go on to Cooks.  Once we arrived at Cooks they started an IV and did more blood work to confirm that it was Leukemia.  And that is Kinslee's long story on how we found out she has this nasty cancer.

3 comments:

  1. I just wanted to tell you about a treatment that I found ouyt about while getting my weekly Plasma Phersis. There is a treatment called Photo Pheresis that I learned about in Austin at North Austin Medical Center. The treatment was being done on a young girl who had some form of Leukemia. What they were doing was taking her blood out a little at a time and medicating it with special drugs. Then they run it through a maching that zaps it with UV light and it only targets the cells that are medicated and it kills them. Thjis is a very simple explanation but you might want to contact Dr. Hootkins and tell him Philip Hughes, tie-dye guy, that I wanted her to talk to him and he could then refer or whatever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Kayla! That treatment he mentioned sounds very interesting. I actually used to work at NAMC in Austin and Dr. Hootkins is a wonderful Physician. I think you knew my father in law was diagnosed with Lymphoma 4 years ago. He has never had to be treated with chemo but has used some more natural treatments one of which is called UV blood irradiation which sounds very similar to the treatment Phillip mentioned. Anyway, along with diet and lifestyle changes he has been in remission since his first 6 month check-up. Might be worth looking into!!
    -Jaime

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love that you started a blog. It's a great way to record Kinslee's story and give everyone specifics to be praying for! We Love y'all! Praying Praying Praying.

    ReplyDelete