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On Monday 4/12/2021 the day started like any other day. Brooklyn woke up, ate breakfast and off to Preschool she went. She then got home from school, and we then went to her first baseball practice of the season. She acted as normal and spunky as she normally does. She even was helping out other girls on the team since this is her 2nd year playing she felt "she knew how to play." :) We got home on Monday from practice about 7pm. Brooklyn then started crying to me that her tummy hurt. Since she hadn't gone #2 in several days, I figured that is what it was. We gave her some Miralax to hopefully help with her tummy and some Ibuprofen to take the pain away. She proceeded to fall asleep in my bed while I rubbed her back. She then slept all night in her bed until 5am Tuesday morning. She woke up and came into mom and dad's room saying her tummy still hurt. Again, still no bowel movement so we figured she was getting pretty backed up. She climbed into bed with us and cuddled and fell back asleep until it was time to take her brother to school. She then acted fine all day on Tuesday, home with mom while I worked from home. She would get up and get her own snacks as usual and was just laying around watching TV . Tuesday night she started crying again close to bedtime telling me her tummy still hurt. She pointed to the lower right side almost exactly on the side of her body. I did the "rebound" test to see if it appeared to be appendicitis. And that was negative. Her tummy seemed full so again we chalked it up to her maybe having a gas bubble or needing to go #2. She fell asleep as normal and woke up normal on Wednesday morning. She wasn't super hungry Wednesday morning but who is when your bowels are so full? I got her some magnesium citrate to drink which is a saline laxative. She drank that at 10:30 Wednesday morning. I went to check on her at noon and she was laying in my bed with a bright red face. She had now spiked a low grade fever of 101.4. I decided to take her in to be checked out. After several tests it was determined that we needed to be transferred to Blank Children's hospital in Des Moines due to a large tumor on her right kidney. We saw that the mass was quite large and was pushing all organs, including her bowels, to the left side of her body. This positioning change is what was causing her to not be able to go #2.
We arrived Wednesday 4/14/2021 to Des Moines around 7:30pm. They admitted her through their ER for further evaluation. We got up to our room Wednesday night about 11:30pm. Brooklyn just kept having the right sided pain and would point to the same spot each and every time. We slept for a few hours and then they started doing additional testing with labs and another full CT scan (some know it as a CAT scan) with and without contrast on Thursday afternoon. This revealed the same mass that was found in Mason City's CT, however highlighted a few of the vessels that they wanted to see before they would operate. We were then put on the operating room's schedule for Friday afternoon. During the day Thursday Brooklyn got to go to a play room (by ourselves of course due to COVID we were not with any other families and they schedule a time for you to be in there), color, craft, and was very happy and smiley being the center of attention. It is not often that she gets this much one on one time with both mom and dad.
After little sleep from mom and dad, Brooklyn slept pretty good, it was time for the big day; Friday, surgery day. The goal was going to be to go in and remove the full tumor (about the size of a softball) and the entire right kidney. They also needed to remove some suspicious lymph nodes around the kidney. Then they would send everything to pathology to have them confirm what this mass is exactly. They are highly suspicious that it is a cancerous Wilm's tumor. We knew that the way her tumor grew that it was goiing to be very difficult to operate on and remove. It was pushed up next to the liver, the diaphragm, and the vena cava. We knew that there were a lot of risks with the surgery because of how big the tumor was and how it was growing up under the liver and diaphragm. The surgery yesterday was LONG. It was so hard to sit around and wait for our precious Brooklyn to get done. She left mom and dad to go back into surgery at 1:24pm and got back to her pediatric intensive care room at 7:35pm last night. It was a long hard surgery. The outcome wasn't exactly what we were hoping for. Once they got in there they realized that the tumor had formed these "bridges" connecting to the liver. Some of the "bridges" were larger than others. The surgeon took a quick piece of one of the "bridges" and sent it to pathology during surgery to see if it was liver tissue or not. Unfortunately, it was not, it came back cancerous cells. That is when they had to stop, get a few samples, and close her up. They determined that the safest route would be to let her recover from this surgery, start chemo and radiation, and then go back in for surgery and remove the tumor and kidney.
So the plan as of now .....Brooklyn will stay here in Des Moines probably all week this upcoming week to get a head start on recovering from the initial surgery. She will then go home and recover for 2-3 weeks. Then, she will start chemo for about 6 weeks. Then re-image her (another CT scan) to see how much it shrunk. Once they deem it to be a small enough size they will schedule us for surgery again for kidney and tumor removal.
Chemo will involve driving back and forth to Des Moines once a week. At this time we are not sure how long that will all last. More updates to come after we know the exact cancer that it is once we get the pathology reports back this week. At some point we also know radiation will be needed as well, which will involve 2 weeks stays for each round. Again, more to come on all of that.
This has been an absolute whirlwind. We're numb and just in disbelief that this is our reality and the unthinkable is happening to our little girl. We'll do anything and everything to help Brooklyn beat this thing. We appreciate the hundreds of prayers, texts, offers of support, etc. We know we're not alone in this and with the power of God, family, friends, and Brooklyn's spunk, she's going to beat this thing.
We had great results yesterday! Praise God! All images and labs showed she is a cancer free, healthy 8 year old! 🥳 It was one of her not so great pokes. So many tears and she was terrified. But we got through it. We then celebrated with her favorite restaurant, Olive Garden. Special thanks to Aunt Deb for the gift card! 😘
We will go back again in July! For now we are off to enjoy spring and summer! Thanks for all the support!
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