2022 Miracle Child – Brooke Badgero
Written by her mom, Sara
At the beginning of June 2021, Brooke started feeling nauseous each morning. Some mornings to the point of vomiting, but then she would feel fine for the rest of the day. A week or so passed and it was not improving. We decided to schedule an appointment with Brooke’s pediatrician, who did not find anything remarkable other than her elevated blood pressure.
The following week, our family traveled to South Dakota and Colorado. While we had a great trip and made many memories, Brooke still experienced a lot of nausea and increased vomiting each morning. During the trip, Brooke became hesitant to eat out of fear of throwing up. It quickly turned into, “let’s get her to eat whatever sounds good." We ended the week with many milkshakes, chicken nuggets, French fries, and string cheeses!
As soon as we returned home, we met with her pediatrician who determined it was time to take Brooke to the Sparrow emergency room for hydration and more tests. This was July 7th (a day we will never forget!) The emergency room pediatric doctor at Sparrow was wonderful and very determined. Brooke had more labs, a CAT scan, ultrasound, and an EKG performed. The results showed that her kidneys and liver were enlarged, her blood levels were out of range, and she was very dehydrated. The ER doctor felt her blood levels were off just enough to have the on-call pediatric oncologist have a look. At first glance, the oncologist did not think there was anything indicating cancer but ordered additional labs to be certain. We are very grateful to both doctors for being curious enough to pursue the root cause!
Today, we know Brooke has T-ALL (T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) with CNS-3 (which indicates that it was in her central nervous system as well). Between June and August of 2021, Brooke had multiple bloods draws, a power-port surgically placed, two platelet transfusions, four blood transfusions, two bone marrow aspirations, five lumbar punctures, received eight different kinds of chemo, stayed 34 nights in the hospital with two different stays in the Pediatric ICU, and had many, many medications each day. All of this has allowed her to officially be in remission as of August 18, 2021 (although she remains in treatment aimed at prevention of recurrence.)
Brooke is feeling great and is joking around and singing all the time. We attribute this miracle to the many blessings, prayers, and acts of support from family, friends, St. Mary’s Elementary, and our communities. The team that God has given us to treat Brooke has been an enormous blessing. Everyone from her initial visits with our pediatrician at Sparrow Portland to the ER staff, and all the nurses and technicians at Sparrow have been great to work with in addition to the incredibly dedicated MSU Pediatric Oncology team. We hope Brooke’s story and her road to recovery can be a sign of hope to even one other family who may have to take a journey like this someday.