Brady's Fund

On December 20, 2012 our 7lb 5oz baby boy Brayden Marcus Kier graced us with his presence 1 month early. He had been trying to come out into the world since I was about 21 weeks pregnant with him. He was a rough pregnancy but oh so worth every bit of it! I always felt he was fighting for us as much as we were fighting for him! He was born with an extra finger on each hand and extra toe on each foot and spent 8 days in the NICU because he had a lung infection that turned into a pneumothorax  and needed a chest tube. He was finally able to come home and was just amazing! He had 3 surgeries throughout his first year to remove the extra digits but He has grown and flourished amazingly!
On Dec 20, 2014 we had his 2nd bday party! He ran around happy and excited! Everything changed around midnight when he woke up screaming, nothing calmed him down! I felt sure he must have some growing pains or maybe even flu because by 12:00pm on Sunday Dec 21 his fever was up to 102.3. We were able to see a pediatrician that afternoon and she felt it was just a virus and sent us home with alternating Motrin and Tylenol. By 6:00pm he hurt for anyone to even pick him up and was unable to walk because of pain! I knew there had to be something wrong this just wasn't right for him to be in so much pain! We ended up in Augusta Health ER by 10:00pm and thankfully the Dr did a blood test that indicated Brayden's platelets were extremely low and had almost no red blood cells! He said we needed to be transferred to UVA! We were taken by transport to UVA's ER and our world fell apart. We were told Brayden most likely had a form of childhood leukemia but would need other tests to find out exactly what he had. Brayden had to have a bone marrow biopsy that came back on Christmas EVE that our baby boy had AML with subtype M7. To say we were devastated would be an understatement! We are now in the biggest fight of our lives to save our baby boy! We had blinked and our wild man was running around just fine to being on all kinds of pain meds and unable to get out of bed! On Christmas Day our brave Brady had his first spinal tap and injected with Chemo.  Currently we are expecting him to have 5 rounds of chemo total, which involves 10 days of Chemo drugs and 18 days of recovery. This time will be spent in the hospital because his immune system will be completely gone. We may get to go home a few days before beginning the next round to see his two big sisters Kaylee,7, and Maddie,5, who are missing us as much as we miss them! We tell Brayden constantly how strong he is and he says "Brady Strong!" He is the strongest, bravest most resilient boy I have ever met and we are so proud to be his parents! If only we could all be "Brady Strong!"