Denman Island resident Kaydence Sadler’s health has taken a turn for the worse, and her parents are reaching out to the community.
“We are really at our wits’ end,” said Danielle Vandermolen. “Since the article you wrote, things have turned.”
Kaydence Sadler’s battle with cancer was first documented in the Comox Valley Record in February of 2017.
In 2016, Kaydence was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), with a Philadelphia chromosome and CNS (cerebral and spinal fluid) involvement. She was only seven years old at the time of the diagnosis.
She spent that entire summer in the hospital, before being recommended for a bone marrow transplant. A search for an acceptable donor was brief, as Kaydence’s father, Raymond Dix, was a perfect match.
The bone marrow transplant lasted about a year,” said Danielle. “She relapsed, and hard. Then, during her relapse treatment, she actually relapsed again.”
Kadence is now scheduled for intensive treatment (CAR T- cell immunotherapy) in Seattle, Wash.
This procedure involves taking immune cells from a patient’s bloodstream, reprogramming them to recognize and attack a specific protein found in cancer cells, then reintroducing them back into the patient’s system, where they get to work destroying targeted tumor cells.
“Her treatment in Seattle is covered, but everything else is on me and her father,” said Danielle. “We go down from the 16th to the 23rd for consult, and they are extracting stuff from her. Then we come home for a two-week period, and then we are back in Seattle for six weeks, or longer, depending…”
“We kept the gofundme page open because just after the original article came out she broke her heel bone, got sent back to Vancouver, spent the summer there and we were home for about two weeks and that’s when we found out she had about 80 per cent relapsed.
“As a parent, I don’t even know where to begin asking the community again for more support and more help. But we don’t even know what we are going to have to do [financially]. This is… stressful, to say the least.”
Anyone in a position to help Kaydence and her family can contribute to the fund at gofundme.com/kaydencesupport