Day 20 of Guest Blogging for TSC Awareness

By guest blogger Kimberly Clisbee  (Los Angeles, California)

When you are expecting a child everyone has advice to give. What diapers are the best, what to do for a fever, rash, or tummy aches. But no one prepares you to hear the words “your baby has brain cancer.”  I would like to bring you on Lani’s journey and share with you her struggle and successes with this dreaded disease that we now know to be tuberous sclerosis.

I moved to California from NH in hopes for a better life. It was 2009 and we were in a deep recession. I was unemployed and could not find work to save my life, so I enrolled in college in the pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. I attended school for a year, but as my unemployment was coming to an end, I needed to find employment to pay the bills.

At the time I was teaching martial arts and had a great opportunity to open a school with a martial arts colleague of mine in LA. During a business meeting in September of 2009, I met Chris,  and we fell for each other almost immediately. For the next three months he would fly out to visit me while I was closing out my affairs in NH. We would drive out to California on December 27, 2009. In February of 2010 I discovered I was three months pregnant. The plan was that I would give birth, then go back to school to finish my degree and get a job to support my family. When I arrived in California, Chris revealed that he was disabled and could not work due to seizures. He was scared to tell me because he thought I would leave him. But I am not that way. If you love someone, you love them no matter what.

When Leilani was in my tummy everything was fine. I had placenta previa when I was pregnant, so I had monthly ultrasounds which never displayed any developmental problems. I was always told everything looked great. I also had an amniocentesis which came out fine. So when I had Leilani on August 26 I was expecting to have a perfectly healthy baby girl. From the first moment I held her in my arms I knew something was not right. She seemed to jump and twitch every couple of minutes. I kept asking the doctors if there was a chance these were seizures since her dad had a history of seizures, but I was told they were infant twitches, common to newborns.

Well I have been around a lot of newborns in my life and I knew it had to be more than that. Trying to breast feed was also a big challenge for Lani. She would start off fine but then start jumping and end up stopping a couple of minutes in. The doctors again said everything was normal. Finally two days before we were to go home I called the nurse in my room because Lani’s breathing seemed labored. They brought in a respiratory specialist that said that Lani did not get all the fluid out of her lungs when she was born and needed to go to NICU until they were clear. I was relieved.

I thought that was it; she was just having problems breathing and the everything was going to be fine. That was on Saturday the 28th. The next morning at 6:00am I was woken up by the NICU doctor in charge. She had informed me that Leilani had a seizure at 3:00 am and was down having an MRI. Since Lani was delivered by caesarian they told me they were just waiting for a wheelchair and then they would bring me to her. I never hopped out of bed so fast in my life and started down the hall towards the elevators. Radiology was all the way on the other side of the building three floors down, and I think I made it there in light speed.

I don’t even remember being in pain, it just went away right at that moment. All I felt was fear. They were only a level 3 hospital, so they did not have the ability to perform contrast MRIs. All you could see was a 7 centimeter shadow taking up ¾ of Lani’s right hemisphere. She was immediately sent to CHLA. She would get the care she needed there. Unfortunately I was stuck in the hospital until the next day, so I sent Chris and my mother with Lani. That was the longest night of my life! I was alone, I was scared and I was asking every five minutes if I could leave. Finally, the next day around 2 pm, I was released.

We went straight to the NICU. She was hooked up to so many machines and had so many people around her. I literally felt drunk. So many people were coming in and out, introducing themselves, telling me not to worry, as if that were possible. Finally one of the doctors came in and told me they were able to perform a contrast MRI on Lani and what they were seeing was a solid mass. They needed to do a biopsy ASAP to determined what it was. So on September 9th at 7:00 am Leilani went in for her very first brain surgery. She was only 13 days old.

Knowing that your child is going to be in the hospital long term not only holds an emotional strain but a financial one as well. We live 60 miles from the hospital, and in LA traffic that could take up to 2 hours both ways depending what time you left. For the first week we had to commute back and forth and since I couldn’t drive. My poor mother who came out for two weeks had to cart me around. This was very hard for her. Not driving me around but the whole thing. She came out to see her granddaughter come into this world and to help me and instead she got to take part in this nightmare.

She was only able to stay for a couple of weeks and in that time she had to rotate seeing the baby with Chris, hold her granddaughter in a hospital room full of sick babies, and leave without knowing what Lani’s fate would be. Thank you Ma, and I am sorry you had to go through that! We met with a counselor, Glenda. She helped us arrange everything we needed for Lani- business, personal and otherwise. She organized Lani’s baptism which was held in the hospital before my mother left, and she hooked us up with one of the greatest organizations ever! The Ronald MacDonald House.

They made things so much easier for us!!! They are right across the street from the hospital. They have a fully stocked kitchen at your disposal, your own fridge space and cabinet space so you don’t have to eat out. They have a laundry room, gym, counselors, and most nights, volunteers come in and make dinner for you. The charge $25 a night but it is based on your income, so if you can’t afford to pay they waive the fees.

We met a lot of other wonderful people there that were going through their own struggles with their children. We bonded with a few of the families, but sadly, over our 43 day stay we witnessed half of them lose their battle. That was one of the hardest parts. These people were people we had coffee with in the morning and exchanged stories with, we would take the shuttle back and forth with them, our children were in the same rooms. Until one day they weren‘t. And you see the other parents in the hall crying, and they don’t really want to talk to you because your child is still fighting and theirs lost their fight. I pray for those families every day, and I thank GOD it was not us. People don’t realize the ¼ of the children in a NICU never make it out. We were one of the lucky ones.

I decided early on that I was going to act as if this was a normal for Lani’s sake, so I was there 12 hours a day. I brought clothes, toys and bedding from home. No hospital stuff was to be used. I would be there at every feeding, bath time and doctors rounds. If I was going to do this I had to stay strong, so there was no crying allowed around Lani.

One of the first thing a child learns is emotion and they feel that through their parents emotions so I tried very hard to keep it as normal as I could. Don’t get me wrong, I lost it plenty of times!! But I would leave so she wouldn’t feel it. She was not able to feed from me so I pumped every three hours. I read her bed time stories every night and held her all the time. Singing to her and telling her all about her room, her family who loved her, and what we were going to do when she got home.

I really think that mental mindset made a big difference for everyone. It helped me cope with what was going on and gain control over my situation, as well as seal the bond between Lani and I. Mom had to leave and it was time for Lani’s biopsy. I was never so scared in my life. The surgery took three hours which felt like an eternity. We had to wait a week for the results so in that time we just tried to stay positive. Leilani was having a seizure about every 10-45 min. Her oxygen levels were always good which is what you want; no oxygen is what causes brain damage. But she was having infantile spasms which are very dangerous and usually don’t show up until 6 months of age.

I had to convince them that was what was going on. The nurses kept telling me no, she could not be having infant spasms as a newborn and moved Lani to the back of the room. They took her from having two nurses to having one nurse who was not even paying attention to her. Well that was my first run-in with the nurses, and not the last I assure you! I called the head of the department of neurology. Lani being such a rare case it was easy for me to access anyone and everyone. Everyone wanted to be part of her story.

I told him what was going on and insisted they look into her seizures so there was no more doubt or guessing. So he did. He called down to her room, reprimanded the nurses, and had them move her to the front and reassign the other nurse. They were not happy with me but I didn’t care. I was not there to make friends, I was there to save my daughters life. Most of the nurses were great I must say, but there were a few that just didn’t work for me and I let them know it. You have to. If you see something that seems wrong it probably is, and if you do not open your mouth and address it you have no one to blame for the outcome.

They performed an EEG and it confirmed they were infantile spasms, which in itself was extremely rare. The hardest part for the staff, as well as us, was that they have never seen a case like Lani’s before and they had no idea what to do for her. Finally the pathology came back and we were called into the conference room. When we got there we saw ten people sitting around the table, some we knew and some we never seen before. We were told that Leilani had a rare form of brain cancer called “Congenital Gemistocytic Astrocytoma” and that there were only three other known cases in medical history. The other cases were successful but Lani’s case was a little more complicated. She had one big tumor and two small tumors on the right. But she also had one small tumor on the left.

They could only operate on one side and it had to be the right, so they told us it didn’t look good. They said if I never had the respiratory nurse check Lani’s breathing and she went home she would have died in a few weeks. Then they went on to say that her chances of surviving such a big surgery for such a small baby were slim, and if she did make it, the left side would eventually grow, and if that happened than there would be nothing they could do. They suggested the unthinkable. Just take her home and let whatever happens happen. I told them that was not an option! If she dies in surgery then that is what happens, but I was not going to sit by and do nothing! I don’t care if you have never done this surgery on a 3-week-old! But either you take her to UCLA or I will, but she is going to have this surgery! At first they told us they were going to take the whole right side, but they only took the frontal lobe and part of the center portion.

The surgery was a success! Her seizures were gone. Her pituitary gland went into shock as a result of the surgery, so she developed diabetes incipitus (water diabetes) and renal disorder. She had to go home having two shots a day of DDAVP (a really dangerous drug that controlled her sodium levels) along with phenobarbital and topamax to control her seizures and hydrocortisone to control her adrenalin. All this adult medication for this 7 pound baby, but if it was going to help, who am I to question. I am not a doctor. Boy has that attitude changed! I was just so happy to take her home! She didn’t sleep the first few days because of the dark and quiet. She was so used to all the lights and noise of the hospital. We were so hopeful that this would be it.

Lani was released from the hospital on October 14. We were so hopeful that this was going to be it. That she would come home and recover and never have to have another surgery again. The first week home was great, she progressed so much! She was smiling and playing, doing all the things a two-month-old baby should do. A week later, mother came to visit. Everything went well, my mother got to see Lani out of the hospital, and Lani got to spend time with her Grandma. It was the night before my mother was to fly back to Boston and I was getting Lani ready for bed. She was lying on my bed while I was puttering getting things ready, when I looked down at her and noticed she was kind of breathing funny and her eyes looked red and a little watery. She almost looked as if she was scared. We didn’t make much of it and went on with our night hoping it was nothing.

Two days later I noticed it happen again. It was really hard to tell because it lasted seconds and she didn’t have any typical seizure signs. But I knew. My heart dropped. We called her doctor the next day and told her what we were seeing. She said it didn’t sound like a seizure but she wanted her to have an EEG anyway. So we went in for an EEG and it was confirmed that she was having seizures again. Her doctor told me that her visual signs and EEG results were so slight, it was hard to tell what was going on. She asked me, “What, do you do stare at her all day?” And I said, “Why yes, I do.” She laughed and called me the “seizure dog mom.” She said that they had to look at the video over and over again to see what I was seeing. I replied, “Well, I am a mom and moms just know.”

The performed an MRI just to be sure that it was a tumor causing the problem and they found one on her temporal lobe. They scheduled to have a temporal lobe resectioning on November 30. In the mean time Lani was still receiving two shots a day for diabetes insipidus, which I insisted she no longer had. But I would fight that battle after Lani’s surgery. This surgery was a bit of a nightmare. Before surgery (as most of you know) you can not eat for 12 hours, so when it is a baby they try to get them in ASAP. Well, the scrubber in the operating room was not working and since Lani’s doctor did not want to use another room, we had to wait three hours. She was seizing every hour, and she was hungry and scared. It took them five times just to get an IV line. Complete nightmare! They finally took her in and then the waiting game began. This time it was nine hours! I was so scared. I kept having them call to make sure everything was ok. Finally the doctor came up and told us he got it all out and she was on her way to the PICU.

The first person we met the PICU was Lani’s nurse whose name I can’t remember. She was a good nurse for the most part- nice enough. But the thing that I remember the most was when I walked in and she was ordering insulin along with Lani’s other meds. When I explained to her that she didn’t have sugar diabetes, that she had diabetes insipidus and needed DDAVP she said to me, “What’s that?” Scary right!? But then that was followed by, “Thank you for telling me! It gets so busy in here that I don’t always get time to read the charts.” Well needless to say, I didn’t leave that night! Thankfully we were only in there for one night. We were transferred to the main floor the next day and released two days later. This was a relatively easy surgery for Lani and she was back to herself in a couple of days. They used the same incisions, so there was no new scaring and most importantly, no seizures for three weeks…

So after three brain surgeries we are right back where we started. But this time she is having infantile spasms again, along with her regular partial onsets. They were not sure if Lani could have more surgery being so young so they wanted to go the medication route. What does this mean for Leilani? More medication. The upside is that her seizures would eventually be under control. The downside is that you are filling your baby with poison that could give her all kinds of other problems.

These medications have serious side effects and as a mother I had to research each and every one so I would know what I was willing to try and what was too risky. I do recommend you for the most part listen to your doctors, they didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and 8+ years in school to not know what they are doing. But the reality is, hospitals like anything else, are businesses and everyone wants to get paid including the pharmaceutical companies. So don’t be afraid to say no if you are informed about what it is you are protesting.

I was finally able to convince them that Leilani’s pituitary gland was functioning on it’s own so her endocrinologist took her off of the DDAVP and Hydrocortisone J. So now she is only on four types of anticonvulsants at adult doses, and she is still having up to 18-22 seizures a day that last almost 5-10 minutes each. She has been going like this for three months, which is how long I told her doctors I would give all this medication to work. Add some subtract some, it made no difference. So I told them I want to do something else because I was not willing to let these medications ravage her internal organs, they were not helping.

They recommended two alternatives: Sabril, a drug that could damage her peripheral vision, and carried no guarantee to stop the seizures. Or a high powered steroid called Actar. We went with the steroid after doing much research. This medication cost $25,000 for a two week supply! Thank GOD I didn’t have to pay for it. But it had to be administered intramuscularly twice a day which was the hardest thing I ever had to do. My heart broke every time.. She immediately started having side effects. She was inconsolable all the time!!!! And this is a baby who is always happy. She was swollen, hungry all the time, and just flat out miserable.

Her seizures did not stop or slowed down, so after two weeks of this I wanted to stop. We went to her pediatrician for a check-up and her blood pressure was 170 over 95. We immediately took her to CHLA. Her neurologist did not want to admit her. She said the when her blood pressure got under control she could leave, but I knew there was more going wrong. I kept telling them she was having problems peeing and that she had a history of DI. This was not true of course but I knew it would force internal scan, given the fact that ACTAR can shut down your kidneys and liver.

After doing some tests they discovered her liver was ¼ larger than it should be and had a gritty texture on it. She was admitted immediately. Because the medication was not appropriate for her seizures, all the bad side effects took place. This is why it is dangerous to take medication your body does not need. After four days in the hospital I went to see her surgeon to demand he rethink Lani’s surgery. I was not taking anymore chances with medications, nor would I let her keep having seizures that could cause permanent brain damage or, even worse, kill her.

He said that it would be too dangerous and the seizures would not cause as much damage as the surgery could. It is hard to know what to think or what to believe sometimes. He has performed three surgeries on her already. I thought he truly cared; he is an accredited brain surgeon. I said I would try one more thing but on my own conditions. I would try a ketogenic diet. It was medicating, but with food; it was been proven to reduce and stop seizures. I wanted her taken off all but one of her anticonvulsants, and if this did not work I was going to do what I had to do. With much fighting over trying Sabril, which was off the table for me, considering this last fiasco they agreed.

We were getting ready to go to Boston for a visit so I asked Leilani’s doctor for all of her medical records, tests, MRI results etc. The plan was to have a doctor at Children’s in Boston take a look at her case and get a second opinion. She gave me a consolidated report of Leilani’s case. She also gave us a referral for a doctor in Orange County and stated that she has been pushing for the surgery.

We made an appointment in OC before we left for Boston and that is where we met her new doctor. If you have ever had to deal with a surgeon you know that for the most part they are not very warm and fuzzy. Especially brain surgeons! I don’t know if it is the whole GOD complex thing, or they have been numbed from seeing so much. Our new doctor was the exception to this rule. He insisted we call him Devin and hugged and kissed Leilani as if she was his own child. This gave us great comfort. To Dr. Binder Lani is a person not just a patient. Every time we go to his office he is introducing us to the staff that does not know us. He even keeps a picture of her in his shirt pocket.

Chris and I did not come to our decision easily, this was a big surgery. For the most part, small children recover from it nicely. But Lani was only one year old and this would be her fourth surgery in a year, something that in itself is unheard of. The other issue is Leilani had a tumor on the edge of the left hemisphere. And there was a dispute on whether it was on the basal ganglia or the third ventricle.

The basal ganglia are associated with a variety of functions, including voluntary motor control, procedural learning, relating to routine behaviors or “habits” such as eye movements, and cognitive, emotional functions. And the other was the third ventricle, which is mainly responsible for storing cerebral fluids, and not as dangerous to operate on. But our doctor was sure it was the third ventricle and that it would be ok. So with that we put our trust in him and consented to operating on both sides. The decision was the toughest decision we have ever had to make. This could have stopped her seizures or left her paralyzed, but we wouldn’t know until it was all done. Sometimes you just have to trust in your gut and in GOD to that everything will be ok. And it was.

Leilani’s surgery took three hours and she was screaming “Mamma” in the recovery room. Music to my ears! She was on her way to a speedy recovery, eating and showing that she recognized us. Her surgery was a success! When they wheeled her to PICU I noticed she did not have a drain. I asked why and the doctor told me that neither he nor the hydrocephalus surgeon who assisted him thought she would have any problem draining the fluid naturally. Wrong! Within a few hours her head swelled up like a balloon. She was throwing up and screaming from the pain. I was so mad because I asked them right out of surgery if she needed it and they said no. This is something that can be done at bedside, so if they did it when I asked then she would not be going through this.

One mistake does not reduce him as a doctor to us. Yes we are still dealing with the effects because she has a little droop to her eye, lots of nerve damage, and is still on a feeding tube. But in the grand scheme of things she is alive and seizure free. So we still stand by our decision to have him as a surgeon and would recommend him to anyone. He has since told me no matter how small the surgery, because of Leilani, he will always drain, so lesson learned I guess.

She would spend the next month in the hospital recovering from this. I slept in the hospital every night. The only time I left was two hours at night to shower and eat, but other than that I was a permanent fixture in the hospital. For the most part the hospital was top notch and the staff was great. There were moments where I was glad I didn’t leave, like the time the nurse forgot to stop the drain and her CSF was all over her bed! Or the time I did leave and came back to find my baby sitting in her own throw up! Of course these instances were few and far between. We were there for a month and it was a very busy PICU. More so than any other I have ever been in. So on a scale from 1-10 I give them an 11. They were truly amazing.

We had a genealogist who was trying to uncover what caused all of this. She took one look at Chris and could see he had TSC. She asked us to talk to his doctor since he has had brain surgery in the past and was under the care of a neurologist, but his doctor said no, he had Sterg Weber disorder, so we all let the idea go. Lani’s heart was fine, and after all, she was born with cancer. As time went on, I did a lot of research online about TSC, and a week before we were to be discharged, I noticed the smallest white spot on the side of her leg.

I called the doctor in and asked if she could do a DNA test on her to rule it out. I need to know how to go forward with Lani’s treatment and what to expect. Her test results came back positive. This weighed heavy on our hearts, but it was better to know than not know. We later had Chris tested and he also tested positive for TS1.

Going forward, Lani sees every week: two physical therapists, one occupational therapist, an early interventions therapist, an eye function therapist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, a feeding therapist and a speech therapist. And this is just to be able to do all the things that all of us take for granted, like walk and talk and feed ourselves. We work with her every day all day! And that is what it will take. But she will be able to function on her own if I can help it! She is the strongest little girl I know and if anyone can do it she can. With all of this we still and always will feel blessed to have Leilani as our daughter. She has given us so much love and hope and we would not change a thing. GOD has a purpose for Leilani. I truly believe that.

Please check out Kimberly’s Facebook page: Love 4 Lani