Luci Cichocki
Sparrow Children’s Center
2018 Miracle Child
Luci’s Story (written by her mom, Whitney)
Luci had flu like symptoms for several days and we scheduled an appointment with her Pediatrician. It appeared that Luci had a bowel blockage of some sort; we were advised that she needed an x-ray and we were instructed to go to Sparrow. We took Luci into the Emergency Department the evening of July 24th. The x-ray confirmed a blockage, but a CT scan revealed a parents’ worst nightmare: Luci had masses in her abdomen and “spots” on her liver--we knew what this meant. While we tried to remain optimistic about a potential diagnosis, our minds were stuck on the possibility that our precious daughter had cancer.
At 2:30 AM on July 25th, Luci had emergency surgery to resection a portion of her bowel. What the surgeon found was more extensive disease than the scans originally revealed. While it took time for an official diagnosis, Dr. Gera and nurse practitioner Cheri Salazar were confident that we were dealing with Burkitt Lymphoma. Our world was immediately flipped upside down. Our sweet little girl, who seemed perfectly healthy and happy a week before, was facing the fight of her life. We also found out a month prior to Luci’s cancer diagnosis, that we were expecting our third child. Trying to keep things “normal” for our almost five-year-old son, Abe, and be present for the beginning of chemotherapy treatment for Luci was just something we had to do.
Dr. Gera recommended beginning treatment right away, as Burkitt is an incredibly aggressive type of cancer. We put our trust and faith in Dr. Gera and her dedicated colleagues and started the long journey of treatment. We spent our first four days at Sparrow in the PICU. Two of those days, Luci was intubated and sedated. The doctors and nurses were top notch in PICU and they took exceptional care of Luci. When Lu was well enough, we were moved to the main Pediatric floor where we’d spend a majority of the next three months. She endured five rounds of intense and aggressive inpatient chemotherapy. This included regular lumbar punctures and scans to chart the progress. There were times throughout her treatment that Luci was extremely ill. She had awful mouth sores, high fevers, and fought off enterovirus. The mouth sores prevented her from eating and drinking for a week or more at a time. Throughout all of this, Lu never lost her spirit or spunk. In fact, she developed quite a reputation on the Peds floor for being a somewhat sassy three-year-old who asked a lot of questions and enjoyed being hands-on with her treatment.
The exceptional care and compassion we received while at Sparrow is something I have difficulty explaining. While Doctors Gera, Scott and Chamdin were wonderful, we spent most of our time with the nurses on 5 Foster. They became our family away from home and took care of Luci like she was their own. They also helped me stay sane, as spending weeks at a time in the hospital can really wear on you, especially while pregnant. We were incredibly fortunate to have an amazing support system both outside and inside Sparrow. Knowing we had so much love, support and prayers being sent our way really kept us strong for our young daughter. We were finally discharged from the hospital on October 14th, for what we hope and pray will be the last time. The follow-up care will involve labs, infusions and scans, but being back home as a family is something I’ll never take for granted. Again, I ‘d like to reiterate how thankful we are to Sparrow and its wonderful staff from the minute we got to the ER to the day of final discharge—they will forever be our family. Thank you for loving Luci…
Whitney Cichociki
Luci had flu like symptoms for several days and we scheduled an appointment with her Pediatrician. It appeared that Luci had a bowel blockage of some sort; we were advised that she needed an x-ray and we were instructed to go to Sparrow. We took Luci into the Emergency Department the evening of July 24th. The x-ray confirmed a blockage, but a CT scan revealed a parents’ worst nightmare: Luci had masses in her abdomen and “spots” on her liver--we knew what this meant. While we tried to remain optimistic about a potential diagnosis, our minds were stuck on the possibility that our precious daughter had cancer.
At 2:30 AM on July 25th, Luci had emergency surgery to resection a portion of her bowel. What the surgeon found was more extensive disease than the scans originally revealed. While it took time for an official diagnosis, Dr. Gera and nurse practitioner Cheri Salazar were confident that we were dealing with Burkitt Lymphoma. Our world was immediately flipped upside down. Our sweet little girl, who seemed perfectly healthy and happy a week before, was facing the fight of her life. We also found out a month prior to Luci’s cancer diagnosis, that we were expecting our third child. Trying to keep things “normal” for our almost five-year-old son, Abe, and be present for the beginning of chemotherapy treatment for Luci was just something we had to do.
Dr. Gera recommended beginning treatment right away, as Burkitt is an incredibly aggressive type of cancer. We put our trust and faith in Dr. Gera and her dedicated colleagues and started the long journey of treatment. We spent our first four days at Sparrow in the PICU. Two of those days, Luci was intubated and sedated. The doctors and nurses were top notch in PICU and they took exceptional care of Luci. When Lu was well enough, we were moved to the main Pediatric floor where we’d spend a majority of the next three months. She endured five rounds of intense and aggressive inpatient chemotherapy. This included regular lumbar punctures and scans to chart the progress. There were times throughout her treatment that Luci was extremely ill. She had awful mouth sores, high fevers, and fought off enterovirus. The mouth sores prevented her from eating and drinking for a week or more at a time. Throughout all of this, Lu never lost her spirit or spunk. In fact, she developed quite a reputation on the Peds floor for being a somewhat sassy three-year-old who asked a lot of questions and enjoyed being hands-on with her treatment.
The exceptional care and compassion we received while at Sparrow is something I have difficulty explaining. While Doctors Gera, Scott and Chamdin were wonderful, we spent most of our time with the nurses on 5 Foster. They became our family away from home and took care of Luci like she was their own. They also helped me stay sane, as spending weeks at a time in the hospital can really wear on you, especially while pregnant. We were incredibly fortunate to have an amazing support system both outside and inside Sparrow. Knowing we had so much love, support and prayers being sent our way really kept us strong for our young daughter. We were finally discharged from the hospital on October 14th, for what we hope and pray will be the last time. The follow-up care will involve labs, infusions and scans, but being back home as a family is something I’ll never take for granted. Again, I ‘d like to reiterate how thankful we are to Sparrow and its wonderful staff from the minute we got to the ER to the day of final discharge—they will forever be our family. Thank you for loving Luci…
Whitney Cichociki