Kayla LaPan

Welcome to my Caring Bridge website.  I am using it to keep family and friends updated, all in one place! I appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting!

My name is Kayla LaPan, and I am a wife to an absolutely amazing man, Joe! My husband and I have been together since 2005, in my Sophomore year of High School. We met when we were 16, and now we are 28! We have three kids together; Kaiden, Maiya & Elaya. We have been married for two years, as of January 2nd 2017! I have the family I have ALWAYS dreamed of.

I am not entirely sure where to begin, as my beginning to this medical issue is kind of in the category of 'unknown'. It was a slow progression of events for me, a slow realization that I had something going on with my body that just didn't feel right. 

It was around March of 2014, I was working out at the gym regularly with Joe, trying to lose weight and get back into shape. I had lost weight and was feeling great! Then, a few months into working out, we found out sometime in July of 2014 that we were expecting baby number three. Shortly after, around September 2014, I had stopped frequenting the gym to focus more on my pregnancy and wedding planning.

Early on in my pregnancy it was known that It was common for me to get a couple UTI's a month during my pregnancy. I was also prone to getting kidney infections because of my history as a child with acute renal failure. Therefore, my doctor put me on medicine throughout my pregnancy to prevent infections, because infections can lead to a higher risk pregnancy and pre-term labor. I had also experienced some sciatic issues during my pregnancy that I mentioned to my doctor. He suggested I see a Chiropractor. Then, sometime during my third trimester with Elaya, I was experience a lot of swelling and pain in my legs. After two visits with the ultrasound technicians, my OBGYN diagnosed me with Superficial Thrombosis. Meaning, that no main artery was clotted, but rather the superficial veins on the surface of my legs may have been affected. With all the pain I was having in my legs, it was making it very difficult to walk any more than 5 minutes at a time without taking a break. My doctor induced me a week early because of how uncomfortable I was. I delivered Elaya on April 8th of 2015, and the swelling slowly went away after 2 weeks.  

About a few months post-delivery, around late July of 2015, I had a kidney stone attack that sent me straight to the emergency room. (I know these things are kind of unrelated, but they tell the story in which I recall the first moments of my body deteriorating.) That had come with a lot of discomfort, but it has come and passed. It was around this time that I recall having some strain in my leg and in my back. So, after a little bit of time, when I had to go back in to my gynecologist, he recommended that I see a Chiropractor. He recommended this to me a few times now, yet I failed to follow through on almost all accounts, but one.  At this point, I was getting tired of the aching hip, so I went in to see the Chiropractor and even after my visit with her, it just didn't settle with me. It just didn't feel like the right diagnosis.

So, months have gone by at this point, almost 2 years! Two years of aching discomfort in my hip and leg. It wasn’t just the aching and discomfort that really got to me, it was the fact that I was literally unable to run with my kids, let alone walk without limping. Initially I just thought I was having sciatica issues, or I was just not in shape anymore, especially after having my third child. Just possibly the normalcies of life, right?

It was in December of 2016, I decided to go into see my OBGYN to talk about birth control. This is when I mentioned my pain… again. Being he was my OBGYN, he finally told me to just go talk to a primary doctor. Joe and I had a long discussion about my happiness and what I needed to do to get to where I wanted. He pushed me to go see my primary doctor, so that I could get onto a better path to enable me to start working out again and feeling good about myself once more. Being a stay at home mom with three kids, I am sure you can imagine how I put myself on the back burner.

Just a short month later, January 13th 2017, I had finally made an appointment with a primary doctor. Going into this, I was worried my primary doctor would say to see a Chiropractor (the same thing I kept hearing over and over). What I had really wanted was answers. I was going to push her to let me get images before shoving me into therapy. I had come to this appointment ready to push her to give me what I wanted. To my surprise, she examined me and expressed concern for how long I had been enduring these symptoms. She quickly sent out a referral for an MRI. At this point, my deepest concerns were starting to come to light. I got my MRI done on January 15th, and my results quickly came in the following day. My primary doctor called me to inform me of some shocking news. I had a tumor inside of my bone, that there was a good chance that it was malignant.  I was panicking and in a state of shock! Malignant is not a word you want racing through your head while waiting for more answers. She then referred me to a Cancer Surgeon, whom I saw on January 18th.

This appointment was scary for Joe and me. So many questions, concerns, and both in total dismay. We didn’t really know what to expect. My Surgeon talked to Joe and I about what this all could mean, answered some questions, and then began to say that we would need to do a biopsy to really see what it is we are dealing with. My proximal femur is very weak. My bone is thinning and I have several holes where the tumor is escaping. He mentioned that we would need to do surgery to put in a rod and some screws to strengthen my leg before we began any kind of treatment. We scheduled the biopsy for the following day (I like how proactive this is seeming)! Our biopsy results then came in on January 25th. My surgeon called me, and that was the day that I found out that I had cancer, a cancer called Myeloma. What a scary and shocking truth!

I have done a lot of blood work, 24-hour urine collection, and I have had x-rays done of my entire body. Not to mention a PET scan and a bone marrow biopsy that I had done on February 7th, 2017. We have an appointment on February 15th to discuss the results of the PET and Bone Marrow biopsy. We were supposed to have surgery done on my leg on February 12th. However, my oncologist called to tell me that they found a lesion in my right breast on my PET scan results and put surgery on hold until we could figure out what this lesion is. So, on February 10th I went in to have a mammogram, ultrasound, and even a breast biopsy done on the lesion. Today, I am waiting on my breast biopsy results. We will find out if it is a benign cyst, Myeloma, breast cancer, or any other variation there can be.

Surgery is to be determined, but we are looking at some time in the next week or so! Around February 17th, give or take a day or two. Once we get over this last hurdle, and surgery, we will be looking at doing some radiation for my treatment plan. That is still something we need to discuss with a radiologist. Still some things that are to be determined, and I will be sure to keep sending out updates.

Love to all,
Kayla