Kate loves Mickey Mouse. She loves Cocomelon and Baby Shark. She loves kicking a soccer ball and playing outside.
But mostly she loves doing anything her older siblings, Madison and Kevin, are doing.
When Kate was just four months old, she began throwing up. Probably a stomach bug, her parents thought. But when she stopped urinating, the couple took her to a pediatrician who promptly sent them to the ER. An ultrasound turned up a mass at the base of her bladder. The hospital admitted her to Pediatric ICU and the next day an MRI followed up by a biopsy led to a diagnosis of Embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma.
Brandi remembers the day: May 17, 2021. One day after her daughter turned five months old. “It’s kind of just a blur of doctors and tests and no sleeping,” Brandi recalls of that time. “The days kind of all just jumbled together. The only reason I even remember is because it was right around Mother’s Day. It was right around my birthday. So that’s why that date will never leave my brain.”
And then Brandi did what most parents would do. She researched the kind of cancer that was trying to kill her child. She learned that it is a particularly hard cancer to beat and that the relapse rate can be high. Nonetheless, Kate’s doctors were optimistic.
“We just went in there ready to fight,” she said. “She was my baby.”
Within days of the diagnosis, the Barnes family was introduced to Clement’s Kindness, which helped the family with gift cards, outings to the Nutcracker performance at Christmas and an Easter event at Cancer Survivor’s Park. Clement’s Kindness also provided money to help make car payments and cover the mortgage.
Brandi’s advice to other families: “Reach out to Clement’s Kindness so they can help you. I’m a very prideful person. And I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to take money from someone else that might really need it.’ My husband was like, ‘We really need it too.’ It’s okay to need help.”
Kate underwent 42 weeks of front line treatment involving chemotherapy, including 28 sessions of proton radiation, followed by six months of maintenance treatments. Today her prognosis is good.
