Kady's Greatest Adventure

**Updated Cause** Kady got her angel wings at 1:16pm on 7 June, 2019. She is resting with peace, free of the pain and suffering from her broken body. We have peace in knowing that she is no longer fighting. Goodnight for now, my little Kadybug. Her Greatest Adventure has come to an end after being able to fly many family members here to see her and say goodbye before she got her wings. The next chapter will begin by first closing hers with an epic celebration of Kady. It will be something to remember her by for the bright, ray of sunshine that she shined in every place she went. She is going to love seeing everyone celebrate! Next comes the hard part: how to keep her with us no matter where we go. Because we are a military family, we are permanent transients until I retire. We do not have a home to call our own so we have chosen not to bury her. I can't be away from her and since we don't know where we will end up, we have to keep her with us. It scares me to death to think that if she is in an ern, she could be lost, broken, spilled, etc. For this reason, we have chosen to have her asked turned into a diamond. The setting for her will be a permanent, surgically anchored setting in the center of the brain cancer awareness ribbon in the butterfly on my chest. It is the perfect place for me to keep her close to my heart always. Ben and I are also getting commemorative tattoos made from her ashes. The cost will be somewhere around the same as a traditional funeral, around $17,000. That's the plan, thanks for reading ❤ Hello friends! I'm Rachel Baranek (if you don't know me) and I'm going to tell you a small story about my amazing little girl, Miss Kadence (Kady) Baranek. She's only 5 years old but has a story that started like any other American girl but has been given a bit of a twist. She has been able to live in some pretty strange places because her mommy (me) is active duty military. My little Kady is smart, witty, beautiful, and has the kindest heart the world has ever known. She loves her little sister, Laura, the most and tells her that she would do anything for her. She gives Laura anything she has just to see her smile. If Laura hurts or is sad, Kady always tries to kiss and hug her boo-boos away. Up until not long ago, Kady was a bubbly, colorful and energetic little girl just like most 5-year-old little girls. She would run and play and make friends with every kid on the playground. She loved to smile and laugh, be silly, make faces, and just be the beautiful little girl that we have always known her to be. Slowly, things just started to change. Our little girl started to get tired and had trouble with little things like putting her socks on and feeding herself without making a huge mess. Something was wrong. On the 17th of December, our family's lives changed forever and it started when I took a selfie with her to send to my mom. Like most all selfies, I told her to smile big but this time only half of her beautiful little face responded with a smile. She couldn't walk very well and her speech was slurred. Very alarmed and extremely worried, Ben and I rushed our little girl to the ER knowing that something was terribly, terribly wrong. I thought she was having a stroke but I was wrong. It was worse. After a very fast triage-to-treatment whirlwind and a CT of her head, a mass was discovered in an area of her brain stem called the pons. A team of specialists were quickly called in and assembled under emergency recall circumstances and Kady was admitted to the Pediatric ICU (PICU). What my husband, Ben, and I were told next was a parent's worst nightmare: "Unfortunately, I don't have good news for you. Your daughter has a mass in the brainstem called a Diffuse Intrensic Pontine Glioma, or 'DIPG.' It is a very rare condition. Because of the location, we cannot remove the mass and because of the blood-brain barrier, it does not respond to chemotherapy. Basically, there is no cure for what Kadence has and it has never been survived. We can, with your consent, temporarily provide symptom relief and extend her life by a few months by shrinking the mass with radiation therapy but you should know that it will come back in less than a year and does not respond to repeat radiation treatments. I am so very sorry..." Our world crushed and we broke down together, grieving for the future and regretting every little time we had ever put her in time out, yelled because of stupid little situations, or caused her to cry in order to teach her right and wrong. Our baby is here but the future suddenly became a black hole of despair. On the 17th of December, we were told that we will likely have less than a year with our baby girl before she is taken from us forever. It isn't long enough. I want to take it from her and end the suffering before it starts. Multiple tours in Afghanistan as a combat medic and over 15 years of military service didn't prepare me to endure the pain that my heart now feels with every heavy beat. Over the next week and a half (which brings us to now) we mentally broke down and rebuilt our thoughts to turn it into a positive situation. We decided that we need to give her the biggest adventure that we possibly can with the time we have and tour our beautiful country for all its glory. We will continue to fight for, look for, and have hope for a cure and we will continue to look for studies with promising results in which she can participate (as long as she can do so without sacrificing her joy and what health she has). The purpose for this GoFundMe is three-fold: 1. Moving is expensive. We are trying to sell enough of our things, save what money we can, and raise enough money to move to a place closer to her hospital so that our baby has a home to come back to after her treatments at TAMC. 2. We are selling, saving and raising funds to rent truck and travel trailer/fifth wheel or an RV to take Kady on her Grand Adventure across the US. 3. The future is uncertain and could get very expensive with out-of-pocket expenses very quickly. We are moving to a house that is safer for Kady on the days that she doesn't feel like doing much, but we are likely going to have to purchase specialized equipment to keep her safe even in the new ADA-Compliant home. Thank you for reading and thank you for your consideration! Also, if you would like to join our family's efforts to raise money for Kady's Greatest Adventure, please message me at [email redacted] or on FB so I can add you to my team :) If you can't donate, it's totally okay. If you can, THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEART! Whether you can or cannot, please share our story with your friends and family. I want the world to know our beautiful little Kady because the world is much brighter with her so she needs to shine all around the country!