Paisley loves crafts, music, rainbows, glitter, princesses, and unicorns. She used to obsess over her hair but after losing it, she now obsesses over her nails instead. She loves anything pink and she just started kindergarten and loves to learn!
Paisley was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (A.L.L.) two months before her 5th birthday in June 2020. She began experiencing leg pain and trouble sleeping, and would often wake up crying, complaining of her back hurting. We took her to see her orthopedic doctor and an x-ray revealed that she had fractures in each of her L1-L4 vertebrae. Paisley was born with a brittle bone disease called osteogenesis imperfecta, in addition to being diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis around her 2nd birthday, so these symptoms, while troubling, didn’t stand out as cancer warning signs.
Around Memorial Day of 2020, she developed a cough and a fever and was diagnosed with pneumonia and was given medication. The medication didn’t help and her pneumonia persisted for weeks, as did the fever. Finally, on June 15th, the doctors ordered a CBC and within an hour of the labs being drawn, we received a call telling us we needed to bring Paisley into the hospital for admittance into the Oncology unit. Three days later she was officially diagnosed with A.L.L.
Paisley had had many inpatient and outpatient chemo treatments via her port, iv, spinal lumbar punctures, and oral. Her struggles are numerous ad she is 100% physically dependent on us. Her bone fragility has continued to worsen and she is very autoimmune compromised.
To her parents, this was by far the most terrifying ordeal of their lives. To Paisley, this was just another obstacle that she wouldn’t let stand in her way of living life to the fullest. We also have 2 younger children who were 4 months and 2 yrs at the time. Between cancer and covid, we did not go out and spent a lot of time separated due to hospital stays. I, her mom, went from working full-time to part-time in order to take her to her chemotherapy treatments
Within 30 days Paisley’s cancer was in remission and she completed 26 months of chemotherapy treatment 2 days after her 7th birthday. There is still a long road ahead and Paisley continues to fight battles on a daily basis, but her spirit is an inspiration to all of us.
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