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Rhyan's care was transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City shortly after diagnosis as they have a specialized pediatric department for Neuroblastoma. She was able to get clear soon after diagnosis, but suffered a brain relapse on Thanksgiving Day, 2016. She has been CANCER FREE since December 2016!
To date, Rhyan has gone through 11 rounds of high dose chemotherapy, a stem cell harvest, 35 rounds of radiation, an abdominal surgery to remove her tumor with the loss of an adrenal gland as well as 9 lymph nodes, a craniotomy to remover her brain relapse tumor, 12 rounds of immunotherapy, 7 vaccine shots to prevent her cancer from EVER returning as well as too many blood/platelet transfusions, shots, pokes, scans/xrays/MRI's to count.
ABOUT US
It was the fall of 2015 and Rhyan Loos was a typical 5-year old little girl getting ready to start kindergarten. Rhyan is the middle child and has always been a very independent, outgoing child that welcomes a new adventure head on. The first few weeks of kindergarten went as we expected, with no hiccups. But then Rhyan started having very bad separation anxiety in the mornings. She hated school and didn't want to go. During this time, her attitude started suffering as well. When she got home from school, she was immediately on the couch taking a nap or complaining of a headache. Throughout the attitude changes, Rhyan also started limping. After a few weeks of things not getting any better, we took her to our pediatrician and asked for an x-ray of her leg. X-rays were taken and we were instructed to go straight to urgent care should she get a fever. That night, she spiked a fever and we went to urgent care where she was poked for a blood draw for the very first time. We were given an initial diagnosis of juvenile arthritis and an appointment was made the very next day with the specialist. After our appointment, Rhyan was admitted to the hospital to make sure the "arthritis" was not septic. While in the hospital, they continued to run various tests and after a few days, we were pulled out into the hallway and were told that Rhyan had leukemia.
Twenty minutes after the leukemia diagnosis, the pediatric oncologist came to our room and told us that Rhyan actually had Stage IV Neuroblastoma. The next few days stood still as we tried to pick ourselves up off the floor from the nightmare that just hit us. On October 16, 2015, Rhyan officially started her fight against neuroblastoma as she began Round 1 of chemotherapy.
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