Help us while we grieve our sweet warrior

This has been edited on March 18 to tell kales entire fighting journey from beginning to the end. Kale fought for a little over 5 years of his life before his passing on March 16, 2024 at 8:30pm surrounded by his family and friends. Whether you can give or not we appreciate all prayers at this time for comfort for one of the hardest and biggest changes that has ever and will ever happen in our lives.  We appreciate everyone for their kindness, prayers 

My name is Amanda and i originally made this gofundme to get help with finances during his bone marrow transplant for my son who had been fighting his leukemia for more than half of his life before his passing on March 16, 2024.

My son Kale was 9 years old and had been battling Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (also known as ALL) since he was 4 when he was first diagnosed on 10/26/18.

On March 7, 2022 we got news about Kale’s first relapse of his leukemia. This day was suppose to be Kale’s last day of chemo treatment and a day of joy but it quickly came crashing down later that day when on the way home we received a call with the news of his blood results coming in with signs of the leukemia cells. We were heartbroken. We immediately checked into the hospital the next morning and began a harsher chemo treatment to try to fight the leukemia again.

Sadly, this still wasn’t enough to rid his body of his leukemia, the day after Easter on April 10 2023, we learned kale had relapsed for the second time. This time along with harsh chemo and staying in the hospital for another month, we also had to travel to Atlanta to do an experimental T cell therapy. This required us traveling down on May 22 in 2023 to have a central line surgically placed to extract his T cells to try this therapy. Then, on July 18 of 2023, we traveled back to Atlanta and stayed for 6 weeks as they gave Kale his genetically altered T cells that they extracted before. These cells were modified to fight Kale’s leukemia cells in his body specifically. They were able to get the leukemia down in numbers but not rid his body of them completely. We then traveled back to Atlanta September 17 in 2023 and lived there for 3 1/2 months for him to receive cranial and full body radiation before his bone marrow transplant. He received his transplant on later that month on September 29. Everything seemed well and there showed no signs of leukemia in his blood on any of the tests that came back as well. We returned home and started going to Atlanta once a week to stay overnight, go to clinic the following morning, then return home until the next week. We eventually started going to Atlanta biweekly and going to tc Thompson in Chattanooga inbetween the week we wasn’t going to Atlanta. At home kale slipped in our kitchen and fell to hurt his hip. He seemed ok but was very tender but the doctors along with us thought he was just sore from his fall. A few days later on January 28 kale spiked a fever. (which if u have been around us since kale’s diagnosis then u know if he has a “fever” of anything over 100.4 we have to take him to the clinic if it’s open or the er for antibiotics since he is an autoimmune compromised child) He started his antibiotics in the er and due to his counts and his hip pain seeming to get a little worse that day they had us stay the night. Later that night it we found out that kales leukemia had come back again for the third and finally time. That following morning he was transferred via ambulance to Children’s Hospital of Atlanta to discuss with the leukemia team what to do next. After doing several tests we found out that his leukemia had already and almost completely took his bone marrow back over again at 80% full. To say we were heartbroken and terrified is a understatement. We had a meeting with the leukemia team about the results of the tests and they had determined a chance for a cure for kales leukemia to get him into remission at that point in time was very very unlikely but we would try anything that we possibly could. There was a trial in Philadelphia we could attempt to try to help get kale in a place of possibly going down in numbers and go in to do another bone marrow transplant a few months later potentially. In order to do that Kale would have to be off a medication that he was still on from his last transplant and he would have to have lower leukemia numbers in order to be able to do the study in Philadelphia first. They did a 5 day dose of chemo to try and lower the numbers while we waited to do the Philadelphia study but sadly kale’s health begin to decline in a multitude of ways. We were moved to the PICU in Atlanta on February 26 and after a few days it was determined that kales body in his current condition can’t handle anymore treatment. We had our baby transferred back home via ambulance to TC Thompson in Chattanooga on March 1 and spent from then til March 16 with our precious boy before his passing.  

Our baby fought for a very long time and endured so much in his small life. While we are absolutely devastated we are also so proud of our baby and happy that he is no longer having to suffer from this horrible disease and not in pain no longer.

 

We are asking for all the prayers during this time while we deal with this massive loss to our family. Any donation is appreciated but not expected and we want to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for any donations or prayers u have given us on this very long journey for kales life.