Our sweet Layla was recently diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She began chemotherapy last week and starts a very long journey to healing. Anyone who knows Layla and her parents know how devastating and shocking this diagnosis was for such an adventurous, busy and spirited almost 9 year old.
Dustin and Lisa are both self employed and have dedicated all of their time over the last few weeks to be at Rady's Children's Hospital with Layla for diagnosis and treatment. I have created this GoFundMe to help ease the stress and burden of finances during this time.
While the family's sole goal is to get Layla healed, healthy and back to her childhood, any contribution would be greatly appreciated and go directly to her care and the family's needs. Thank you all for walking through this diagnosis together, alongside of Dustin, Lisa & Layla. It takes a village, and you are theirs.
Her parents, Dustin and Lisa will be the beneficiary of the funds raised.
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August 21st, 2024:
From Lisa & Dustin
Dear friends and family,
Six months ago, we never thought we would be here.
Our daily stressors included first world problems like coordinating schedules, paying bills, and what was for dinner. Layla was crushing soccer, loving school and friends, running Spartan races with no fear, swimming, skating, surfing, art, the list goes on.
Her resilience and fearlessness are two of the many traits that makes her an amazing kid. She falls down and jumps right back up! She’s unstoppable!
So in April when she started complaining of debilitating pain, we knew something was wrong.
After months of doctor’s visits, X-rays, and on and off pain the orthopedic doctor found some compression fractures in her T-11 - L-1.
They treated them as an isolated incident, just a common kid fracture. 6 weeks in a brace and then return for follow up X-rays.
I was having trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that a perfectly healthy kid had gone from never complaining of pain to having all these unexplained pains, but felt relief when the fractures were finally diagnosed. At least we now knew what was causing it. Or so we thought.
The day before school started, after 6 weeks in the back brace, we returned for the follow up expecting to see healing vertebrae fractures. A more complete spine xray was done and unfortunately, that’s when the bad news and the reality of the situation started to unfold. The xray showed more fractured up and down her spine and the ones they first saw had progressed. You couldn’t miss the look on the doctor’s face. He ordered an extensive list of labs and got an Endocrinologist involved.
The next day was the first day of school. Layla was so excited because her best friend was finally in her class along with all her other friends. Serious girl gang!
After school I planned to take her to the lab to get the tests done. On my way there, I got a call from the Ortho. They told me to take her to the children’s hospital to get the labs done and to plan on being admitted. That was a scary night of tests and best case scenarios being ruled out one after another, but no concrete answers.
After a few hours in the ER, it was clear where the doctors were leaning and Layla was shortly admitted to Oncology.
Since then there have been many sleepless nights and tears, lots of blood tests, an MRI, eco, ultrasound, spinal puncture, and bone marrow test.
Yesterday we got the diagnosis that no parent ever wants to hear or ever dreams they will hear. Layla’s precious little body is battling Leukemia.
Fortunately, we have an amazing team of doctors that have come up with a treatment plan and are hopeful that it will be successful.
So that is where we’re at. It’s overwhelming and we are just trying to wrap our brains around it. It’s a hard and unexpected detour for our family to have to take, but we are strong and resilient and Layla is a fighter! She will battle this and win!
I’m sure the upcoming months will be a roller coaster of emotions and we will be learning a lot about things we never wanted to know, but we are grateful for the huge outpouring of love and light from our friends and family. We feel it!
We will continue to update you on Layla’s progress.
“Life can change in an instant, reminding us of the fragility of our plans and the strength of our resilience.”
