Kefira Rhabdomyosarcoma Childhood Cancer

Kefira is 19 months old, she's been a healthy, happy, playful little girl most of her life until the past couple months. She started seeming more fussy then normal, but she kept breaking new teeth, so we kind of thought it was teething. Eventually, over the past 2 months, she started to be sick constantly, but all things that could be treated and went away. She had strep, UTI's, thrush, terrible diaper rashes, stomach bug and vomiting, then after a 10 day round of antibiotics for her UTI, she was still getting sick. I knew something was off for her to be getting sick as often as she was. The final sign was when I changed her diaper one morning, and there was blood coming out of her lady parts. I knew she needed to go to the doctor immediately. I was thinking she must have an autoimmune disease or something, because she should not be getting sick so often. I went to Children's Urgent Care and the doctor looked at her belly and he knew something wasn't right when she had a hard lump where her bladder was. He immediately wanted to take an x-ray and saw she had a mass, and told me to take her to the ER at children's. He assured me to stay calm, but I could see on his face that he thought something was wrong. I'm so thankful for what he did. We went to children's and after 2 ultrasounds we saw there was definitely a large tumor taking up the majority of her bladder and blocking her urethra, and her kidneys were injured from not being able to empty her urine. The urologist came and put a catheter in, and immediately her poor bladder started to contract to try to empty, you could tell she was in a lot of pain, but she filled up a bag full of very bloody urine and sediment. We also saw the blood that was coming out of her, was becaue her urethera had been pushed down and was hanging out of her privates, from all of her straining to try to pee. That night while I was waiting for what is coming next, I started googling, and found an article on different bladder masses, and found rhabdomyosarcoma, which seemed to fit her symptoms and her age. Later, the oncologist came in and told me that was their suspicion and they would do tests over the next weeks to find out. First surgery she got a biopsy of the tissue and a stint put into one ureter to try to help ease the pressure on the kidney, the tumor was too big to put one into the other side. They also flushed her with tons of fluid to help her kidney, her poor little body was so swollen from all the fluids, but finally her kidney numbers started to return to normal. We got results back from the biopsy that her tumor was indeed cancer, and we were waiting on results for the name of the tumor so we could begin the best treatment plan. Next surgery, she got her port put in, and a bone marrow biopsy to help test the staging of the tumor to see if it had spread outside of the bladder. She then got a bone scan to see if it had spread anywhere else. We're still waiting on a PET scan, but the oncologist was comfortable with all the information they had gathered so far to give us a diagnosis and start on a treatment plan. She was diagnosed with stage 2-stage 3 rhabdomyosarcoma group 3, considered intermediate risk. She has now started with her first week of chemo, and she is on a 42 week plan of getting chemo every week (except 4, she gets a little break towards the end). The chemo she's on can have some very serious side effects, including a different kind of cancer developing years down the road, fertility, early menopause, along with the usual hair loss, immune suppressant, nausea, pain in bones, nerve pain, and a whole other list. She'll need to be very closely monitored during her whole process, since if she gets sick, it can be fatal. Her team of doctors have been absolutely amazing in everyway. She is on lots of different daily medication to help with the side effects of chemo, and hopefully to keep her out of the hospital any more than necessary as she goes on this journey. After her first 12 weeks of chemo, they will look into radiation or surgery, to see if they can remove any of the mass, though because of the placement of it, and the size, they'll more than likely be looking into radiation. We're taking everything one day at a time, and we're hoping we can shrink it enough over these next few weeks that she'll be able to pee without her catheter in. We have this Go Fund Me now to help with expenses over the next year. I (Baylee, mother) will not be working because I'll be her primary caregiver over the next year, giving her daily needles, oral medication, catheter care (which can be difficult with a toddler), and trying to help her with all her symptoms, along with raising (with help from a village) our other two sons (Chai, 4 and Judah, 3). Any donations would be greatly appreciated, along with prayer for healing and comfort for Kefira, for the boys to feel loved even though we won't be able to be with them as much this year, and for strength for her parents and family, that we can walk through this and come out stronger.