Short Stories

My Little Girl "Mini Me"

Caylee was 4 yrs old when she passed and was completely full of life. There was never a bad moment, never a bad memory, except the one where she died.

Caylee comes from the word Katherine, meaning - PURE - and she sure was. All of my children had an upper respitory infection and had been to the doctor's the week prior and put on Zithromax. She was over the cough and on day 7 of the treatment, she got a 99.1 fever(Thursday March 3, 2005,).

She was still acting like a healthy kid. We had been for a field trip to the Fire Station the day before. On Friday, she had begun vomiting. I thought it was a stomach virus. Saturday, she had stopped vomiting, was dry heaving and not keeping anything down, I took her to Healthpoint After Hours Pediatrics. They diagnosed it as a Stomach Virus. I let her sleep Sunday except when she wanted to go to Church, she ate some breakfast, but was tired because of the Promethazine they had given her.

Monday morning she looked worse, we took her to her Pediatrician about 9am. He immediately diagnosed it on sight as Leukemia, Monday, March 7, 2005. We were devastated. He said, "This is not a Death Sentence like it used to be." We took her to the Children's Cancer Center and they aspirated blood from her marrow and diagnosed it as ALL with a 80% chance of survival, this was the initial early diagnosis. The next morning the final results came in and it was not ALL, but AML and now the prognosis was 40% with Chemo and 65% with a Transplant.

My whole world seemed to end at that moment. The Oncologist gave us her road map and said it would mean 10 days of Chemo and then more treatments lasting 2 1/2 years and then she may relapse and need a bone marrow transplant and could eventually die. With 20 years + of experience, they had never seen or expected anything like this. Her WBC was 283,000 and when they started Leukopheresis, a treatment that cleans out all unnecessary white blood cells. Her count came down momentarily to 190,000 and then went back up to 220,000 with an hour left of the treatment. Her heart rate was now at almost 200, they had to put a ventilator in and they explained that we could lose her. They had to resuscitate her twice, 2 minutes and back on Support.

She was not clotting and I was told she probably was not going to make it through the night. I told them to keep trying. I could not fail her. Our priest, Father Rich from St. Catherine's Episcopal Church was there and he said, "The last bit of love you can give her is to let her go." I knew he was right when the bags of blood they were putting in to stabalize her started coming back out. She was bleeding to death, so we had to make a decision to let her go before she did. The Hematologists said that it would be far worse if that happened. I could not bear to do that to her. So, I told them to disconnect her and give her to me. I held her for a long time. I touched her little feet and hands and rubbed her tummy that had hurt so much and kissed her over and over again. I told her that I was so sorry that this happened to her and that I loved being her mommy and that I was lucky to have had that opportunity. She died at 8:13 pm on Tuesday, March 8, 2005.

In November, her class made cards for Thanksgiving. Caylee's card said she wanted to thank Papa for taking her fishing, mommy for buying her things and Jesus for giving her TV. The last thing she said to us just a couple of hours before she passed was, "Papa, I want to watch TV." I want to think that Jesus was standing there telling her whenever she was ready to go home just say it. I think it was her way of saying to us she was ready.

She closed her eyes and did not open them or ever speak again. I truly believe she was already gone.

Two Foundations have been formed, Caylee's Hope Foundation, http://www.cayleeshope.com raising awareness and money for research into Childhood Cancer causes and cures and the Caylee's Heart Foundation, http://www.cayleesheart.org benefiting families who have or have lost a child with cancer; touching the hearts of those touched by childhood cancer.