Throughout our long journey, Donna and I had the pleasure of meeting so many families with precious, but very sick children. This story is about Jazmine Gardner. A precious little girl who is currently going through the fight of her life. Although she does not have a "blood cancer" we still want to share her story.
Jazmine Bryonna Gardner was born on August 18, 2003, a beautiful little girl, with long blonde hair and strickingly beautiful eyes. Her skin was a beautiful olive hue which tanned so stunningly. As most strangers would say, she’s truly one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen. Watching her grow up and her love of playing dress up, she was my true life “Princess”. Jazmine was full of energy, playing all day without ever needing to take a break, she loved her bike, her friends and playing at the playground.
Jazmine had been complaining of pain on her left side for several months, at times she would come in from playing and tell me it hurt, I would give it a kiss and then she would run back out to play, so initially I didn’t worry too much about it. Then Jazzy started asking me to rub her left side and belly as the pain was starting to worsen, so I spent many nights rubbing her belly until she fell asleep. It was then, that I took her to see her primary care physician. The doctor told me she was constipated, and had me feel how enlarged her bowel was, I had no idea at that time that I was rubbing a tumor. I was instructed to give her Milk of Magnesia and prune juice and we were sent home. His advice did not solve the issue of her pain. One night shortly after, she woke up, came downstairs and her skin was yellow. She had dark circles under her eyes, and was in excruciating pain, we immediately took her to the emergency room.
After spending eight hours in the emergency room, the ER doctor came up to me and asked me to follow her. She showed me the masses surrounding Jazmine’s left lung . Her kidney could not even be seen as it was covered in tumor. We were immediately transferred to the Clinic.
On March 19, 2008, Grandma and I were given the horrible news, that Jazmine had stage IV Wilm’s Tumor, which is cancer of the kidney. Both Grandma and I were in shock, and our hearts just sank. After running a series of 8 tests on her, we were told that her cancer would respond very favorable to chemotherapy. We were told that her “road map” would require 38 weeks of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to remove her left kidney.
For the next year, we lived at the hospital the majority of the time. In this time Jazmine endured countless surgeries, removal of her kidney, g-tubes, many secondary issues and infections, and lots of pain and sorrow. We continued with chemotherapy and a session of radiation, then finally on November 21, 2008 our last round of chemotherapy was completed. At that point we only had to go in occasionally for blood counts. January 12, 2009 Jazmine had her mediport removed and on February 19th we had our "End of treatment" celebration. We had finally reached the end of our journey, or so we thought. Shortly before all her treatments were completed, I noticed Jazmine was starting to show signs of pain on her right side when I would hold her there. I told her doctor this but nothing showed up in her scans. March 16th 2009 was the date for her first set of post treatment scans, and I wanted to make sure she was definitely cancer free. She had an ultrasound and CAT scan done that day. After the ultrasound the doctor told us everything looked fine and we could go home but I decided to wait for all the results. So we went to lunch and returned to wait for the results of the CAT scan. The doctor came in and told us that there was some internal bleeding, an infection, or some scar tissue that was attached to her right back muscle. They wanted an MRI done to find out exactly what it was. On March 19thT2009, exactly 1 year after the initial cancer diagnosis was given, we were once again devastated by the news that Jazmine had, in fact, relapsed.
At that point they wanted to biopsy it to make sure they were in fact treating the right type of cancer. Jazmine’s pain started increasing, so she was again put on morphine and Tylenol with codeine to help with the pain. 10 days later, the biopsy confirmed that this was again, Wilm’s tumor.
The doctors explained to us that Jazmine would have to go through another 38 weeks of chemotherapy, radiation, another surgery, and is going to need a bone marrow transplant. This time Jazmine had a 2 line broviac put in for her treatments, and has been pushed back 3 weeks on treatment due to low blood counts, and a double strep infection in both lines of her broviac. As of today, we are still in the middle of our first stage in our next treatment plan, and are praying that it is God’s will for Jazmine to achieve complete remission.
Please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers.
To help this family you can go to any Fifth Third Bank and donate to the Jazmine Gardner Fund. |
