Lilly is kind and sweet. She is sensitive to others’ feelings and can be very funny. At first, she comes across as very shy but after a few minutes with her and if you start talking about animals of any kind, you’ll have her grinning ear to ear. She loves all animals but is especially fond of cats. She is always looking for more information on animals and is a wealth of knowledge on many various species. Lilly also loves music. She plays the piano and the ukelele. Having music in her life was a big part of keeping her going and motivated during her treatments.
In March of 2019, she was tired a lot, her color was pale and she had lost weight. Lilly’s tumor ruptured in gym class when she was 9 years old. She came home from school vomiting and with stomach pain. At first, we thought it was a flu bug. The next day we took her into the emergency room at our local hospital. They didn’t have the diagnostic equipment or specialists to treat her and suspected she had ruptured her spleen. They gave her antinausea medication and rushed her by ambulance to the nearest children’s hospital.
She was in so much pain she couldn’t move. Her bowels shut down and intestinal fluid started backing up into her stomach. After a CT scan, they found a large mass on her horseshoe kidneys. We didn’t know she had horseshoe kidneys before this. Two days later we were flown by air ambulance to a larger children’s hospital for a biopsy of the mass. Two weeks later she was diagnosed with cancer but they thought it was a renal sarcoma.
Lilly was hospitalized for 29 days following her rupture. Chemotherapy was started in an attempt to shrink a 22cm tumor on her horseshoe kidneys. In June, her tumor and half of her horseshoe kidney was removed. It was after testing the tumor that they discovered it was a Wilms Tumor. She had 7 fractions of radiation and 25 rounds of chemotherapy.
Facing this as a family made us stronger. We take nothing for granted and are thankful for everything we have. Especially that we have each other.
Hope session by Laura Snyder Photography | Facebook