MAKENNA

My house is clean, dishes are done, I am caught up on laundry. I have a two year old, this isn’t right.

Those were my thoughts 10 months ago when my daughter, Kyla, wouldn’t get off the couch, she only wanted to watch Finding Dory over and over again. Two weeks prior she was a fun, energetic kid waiting for her second birthday party, full of optimism and life. And within the blink of an eye all her energy was gone. I had taken her to the doctor at our offices on-call clinic, and they had diagnosed her with an ear infection, something we were no stranger to. She had had many prior to this one but there was something different about this one. It wasn’t getting better. I took her back 4 days later and same thing- got stronger antibiotics for her ear infection. Again I pointed out the bruises that we not going away, her yellowing skin, her bleeding gums, and her lack of energy as Kyla was sleeping on me yet again.

Kyla’s birthday came and went and 2 days later on November 1, I took her to our family doctor and refused to see anyone else. He knows my family, I trusted him. Kyla couldn’t walk that morning and little did I know, the night before, on Halloween, was the last day she would walk for the next 7 weeks. Within 10 minutes of talking to us, my doctor had us going to Grand River Hospital as he explained to me, that this needed to be attended to immediately by the paediatrician at grand river hospital. My doctor suspected what the diagnoses was and knew we needed blood tests to confirm. He didn’t tell me, of course, to make sure I got to the hospital safe and not panicked.

From the moment we got to Grand River, things moved quickly. We saw the doctor, we got all the tests done, and within 2 hours we were being told “ I have bad news. Kyla has leukemia.”

My world shattered. Time stopped.

The staff in the clinic jumped into action and knew exactly what to do. My husband came immediately and met with us and they educated him with everything that they told me as well. They answered every question and tended to our immediate needs. We needed to lay down. I was 8 weeks pregnant with our second baby and I had my two year old laying on me sleeping. I wasn’t about to ever let her go so they got me a bed to lay with her. They got us a room and started transfusions on Kyla right away. The next day we got transferred to London Health Science Centre Children’s Hospital.

From that point on, when we returned home in December, Grand River was our pogo clinic and is for the next few years. Being able to stay close to home during my pregnancy and always staying close to Kyla was amazing and a comfort that I didn’t know I needed. To have the same people help us every time we went to clinic, the same friendly faces, and watch them make such a connection with Kyla helped with the daunting fear that my little girl was still getting chemo.

Grand River pogo clinic is not scary for Kyla. She has no fear of going in. She loves the staff and considers them her friends, as do I. She runs down the halls to say hello and sits and “helps” them administer the chemo. She is incredibly strong and we are so fortunate to have the pogo staff so close to us to keep our family together more often.

10 months down 17 months to go.