Queen Creek resident and Schnepf Elementary School student Kyla Hendrickson, 7, was just 5 when she was rushed into an emergency brain surgery. It all started on Easter morning in 2021.
“She woke up and she wasn’t tracking right… she wasn’t understanding the things that we were saying and she wasn’t walking right,” said Courtni Hendrickson, Kyla’s mother. “We had thought that maybe she wasn’t awake enough and if we did the egg hunt first then maybe she’d wake up. She fell flat onto a bench while looking for eggs.”
Everything went stiff, Kyla started vomiting and needed help pushing herself forward in order to avoid choking. Courtni’s friend, who works as a nurse practitioner, came over to look at Kyla and told them to take her to the hospital.
After testing for strep and taking an X-ray and CT scan, the doctor told Kyla’s parents, Courtni and Spencer Hendrickson, that there was a large mass on her brain. The mass was blocking where the spinal fluid exits the brain, causing a lot of pressure.
“They immediately rushed her into surgery to place a shunt in order to relieve the pressure in her brain. They didn’t put her in a hospital gown, they just put a hairnet thing on her and took her into the hallway. We said goodbye and that was the start of it,” Courtni said. Three days later the diagnosis came; juvenile pilocytic astrocytoma (JPA).
Throughout a week span that April, Kyla had three surgeries. The first was to put the shunt in to relieve pressure from the hydrocephalus, the second was the first tumor removal and the third, an attempt to get more of the tumor.
JPA is a rare, slow growing brain tumor that’s found in children. It looks and acts like brain matter making it hard to fully remove.
“They tell you ‘you have to take care of yourself’ and ‘you need to be getting rest, too,’ but everything's thrown at you all at once so you just go into survival mode to help your kid,” said Courtni.
Because of everything, Kyla isn’t able to process things as quickly. It’s become something she just has to deal with in school. Unfortunately, doctors won’t know the full extent of her brian damage from the hydrocephalus until she’s older and her brain is fully developed.
That first year, Kyla had MRIs every three months. After the one-year follow-up that showed no growth in the tumor, she started going every six months. It wasn’t until two years later, in May, that doctors found a three millimeter growth.
For now, the doctors are monitoring it to make sure it doesn’t grow. Kyla has regular MRI scans, appointments every three months with an ophthalmologist to monitor the damage that was done to her retinas, optical coherence tomography scans, physical therapy, occupational therapy through her school, and she's on the wait list for occupational therapy at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
It was Courtni’s sister-in-law that connected the Hendricksons with a friend who had ties to the Armer Foundation For Kids in Phoenix.
The local nonprofit started in 2019 with the mission “to reduce financial barriers for families so that they can care for their children with chronic or life-altering diseases.” To fulfill its mission, Armer Foundation For Kids works towards alleviating stress on parents by raising money through fundraisers, blood drives, various events and community donations.
“The Armer Foundation has taken a lot of stress off of us, especially within that first year. Who knows where we would be right now if it wasn’t for them… Just the amount of bills that we got after the hospital stay alone was insane, and even now, with the follow-up care,” Courni said. “Last year, Kyla had two MRIs costing about $2,000 each. We don’t just have that laying around, so they’ve definitely been a huge blessing. It’s one less thing we have to worry about.”
Donations, whether it’s $5 or $10, goes a long way. People can donate on the Armer Foundation For Kids’ website HERE to help Kyla’s parents and other families who have a child with extreme medical needs.
Despite everything Kyla has gone through, her personality shines through. “She’s spunky and very much marches to the beat of her own drum,” Courtni said, adding that Kyla is always spending time with her older sister, Kloe.
“You have to take things one moment at a time, not even one minute. Sometimes you have to take it one second at a time if that’s what you have to do to get through things, and that’s okay,” said Courtni. “Anything helps. Prayers, good thoughts, good vibes, it all makes a difference."
Spencer Hendrickson added that "every moment is precious. No matter what you’re going through, there’s always people out there willing to help you,” he said.
For more information about the Armer Foundation For Kids, visit armerfoundation.org. Read more about Kyla’s story and donate to her cause at armerfoundation.org/kyla. Anyone looking to directly reach out to Kyla and her family to send them an encouraging message can email [email protected].
