Kali Almquist/Wayman

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. Kali was pale off and on and very lethargic right before thanksgiving but it would come and go so we just thought that it was a cold or flu cause her appetite would be great some days and bad others. It wasn’t until we had a unexpected death in the family and a funeral to attend that we started to notice the paleness and irritability was increasing. She wouldn’t eat or hardly drink and complained about walking or any activities and no appetite for the things she loved like ice cream, candy, spinach etc. the next day was mon so I got her up which was harder then usual she usually is upbeat and perky but this morning she was hard to get up. She ate a little bit for breakfast and headed out the door to her bus then to school. She returned home from school about 4:00 she said she felt like she was going to puke and she was super pale and lethargic at this point I was now like I’m taking you in. So we went to park Nicolette in Brooklyn center we were waiting in line to be seen at urgent care. Kali told me while we were standing in line that she couldn’t breath well and it hurt to breath so instantly they rushed us into a room and a doctor came in right away. They drew blood and urine. It seemed like we were there forever the doctor came in and asked me to sit down and he had a sad concerned face when he came in he then told me that kalis hemoglobin was dangerously low which meant either she had a virus or internal bleeding so he had a ambulance on its way to bring us to childrens. It was the shock of my life. We rode in a ambulance to childrens and we were admitted to the er. We waited her grandma and dad showed up they beat us there cause it took the emt forever to get a iv in her cause her veins were so tiny like the end of a needle. We stayed at the er running more tests to find out why she was so low in hemoglobin. Finally at about 1:30am after being there for hours they had her room ready in picu we got up there and they hooked her up to a iv they had to give her a blood transfusion and sent her blood to a pathologist. We waited in her room thinking and praying that it wasn’t cancer cause the doctor told us that not only was her hemoglobin low but her body was not producing any more red cells either. The next day Dr. Richardson came in and said the news we were all dreading our daughter had ALL Leukemia. Our world stopped I died inside and her dad to. They told us it’s cureable and we caught it soon so she would need another blood transfusion and many more in the three years it was going to take to beat it. She would undergo chemo right away starting 2 times a week and she would have to have three major surgeries one to put a port in which is a device that is under the skin that gives her medicine right directly to her blood stream and they can draw blood from it so sh3 didn hav3 to have it drawn from her arm. Also a biopsy as taken from her spine and another biopsy from her marrow in her bones. The next day she had surgery for those things and it went wonderfully she also started chemo treatment and it went directly into her spine. It took a couple of days to get the results from the biopsies which came back that 60% blasts ( leukemia ) was in her blood and bone marrow but none so far in her spine. It was hard to hear but it wasn’t terminal so now we pray more chemo to come and more biopsies on her marrow more blood transfusions in the next three years. Thank goodness we have a lot of love and support from our cancer team and Monroe elementary school friends and family during this difficult time. Prayers are always welcomed and needed.