One month before diagnosis, Amira wasn’t using her right arm, specifically her shoulder movement. She would play, but would hold her right arm like a chicken wing close to her body. We thought maybe she fell on a toy or something. It would come and go, but when we noticed that it wasn’t going away we took her to see her pediatrician. It took us a whole month of several checkups, specialists, bloodwork, x-rays, etc before we got the call that it was cancer. The hard part was that we did send bloodwork for cancer into an oncologist 2 weeks into our search for a diagnosis and they said it didn’t look like cancer and to keep looking. After another 2 weeks of searching, our pediatrician suggested we get blood work again at a pediatric oncology department which we did. Results came back and the oncologist called immediately to tell us that it was cancer after we thought cancer was already ruled out. At that point, Amira’s bone marrow was packed with cancer cells and 44% of her blood was cancer cells.
Amira is over 2 years into her chemotherapy treatment and has had countless limitations along the way, but is now in a good spot in treatment where she is feeling better and able to play with full function of her body.
At the time of Amira’s diagnosis, I had just returned to work after giving birth to my son. My husband and I both had to take a lot of unpaid time off of work. We also could not all go to the hospital together, so we had to divide and conquer which meant one of us at the hospital with Amira and one of us staying home with our son. With Amira having a compromised immune system, we have had to skip every single holiday, family function, etc. for the last 2 years. We have been living in a bubble and not being able to go out and about or live normal lives since diagnosis.
Everything she goes through is normal for her and she does great with taking medicine, fighting through tough days, helping the nurses, etc. Amira is a fighter and does not complain at all along the way!
Hope session by Kaitlin Brown Photography | Facebook | Instagram