This 9-year-old cancer patient has relapsed 7 times, but now Alex's Lemonade Stand is helping her recover
What will the treatment be? Will it work? Will my child relapse?
Ailani Myers, 9, has relapsed seven times, but her motto remains the same.
"We've always said, you know, we're a family, we're a team, and we do what we have to do," Princecine Myers, Ailani's mother, said.
"It means even if we don't want to do it, we still have to do it anyways," Ailani Myers said.
Pretty wise words from a 9-year-old who has been through more than most adults.
It all started during a visit with family in Texas.
"She had a rash," Princecine Myers said. "I thought was a rash. Come to find out, it was petechiae. And, you know, they were like, 'Oh, it's just petechiae, really no big deal. But if you want to have blood work done, you need to take her to the emergency room.'"
Princecine Myers' motherly instinct told her to get the bloodwork, and it showed a shocking diagnosis — leukemia. It was a rare form of leukemia: one that made Ailani high-risk. The family moved to Baltimore and started a very long journey.
"So when we got to Baltimore, we did her first bone marrow transplant," Ailani's father, Kurt Myers, said. "She relapsed a year later, then she did CAR T-cell therapy for the first time, relapsed nine months later. Then we did a second bone marrow transplant, and she relapsed 60 days later. Then we did the second CAR T-cell therapy. She relapsed 60 days after that. Then we did her third CAR T-cell therapy, and I think she relapsed at nine months, and then we did her fourth CAR T-cell therapy. And they saw evidence, maybe evidence of disease, at her nine-month test."
And even though that could have been a false positive, that meant another CAR T-cell treatment.
That was in January, and since then, there's been no evidence of disease.
Ailani's been through even more than her dad listed. She's had other treatments and was part of many clinical trials.
"Everything except her first two major treatments have been clinical trials, and they've been completely foundational and critical to where we're at now and her looking as well as she looks," Kurt Myers said.
And she looks beautiful. Ailani has been part of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation's "Flashes of Hope" program. It pairs kids and families with photographers.
"They've watched her grow up and memorialized so many steps along the way," Kurt Myers said.
"She looked a little different on the outside, but she always had the same fierceness and drive and heart and determination, and just so sweet and kind," Princecine Myers said.
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