JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville doctor and his team at Nemours Children's Health System are using new technology and medicine to save the lives of young patients.
A little girl diagnosed with a rare liver cancer is the latest patient to undergo treatment using this unique medical breakthrough.
The treatment, called TARE-Y90, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for adults, but has only recently been used in children.
Dr. Howard Katzenstein, or Dr. K as he's sometimes called, specializes in pediatric liver cancers, and when chemotherapy didn't work for 4-year-old Blakleigh Lipe from Murphysboro, Illinois, he and his team were her only hope.
Blakleigh is just like any other child. She loves to ride her bike, color, swing on her swingset in her backyard in Illinois and play with her two German shepherds.
But one thing that makes Blakleigh stronger than most her age is the fact that she was diagnosed with stage 3 liver cancer, resistant to chemotherapy, and it threatened her life.
"We went down there the first time to pretty much do a consult with the doctors and then they sent us back home, and they set up for the pre-Y90 to see if her body can handle it. And then we returned home and we waited about two weeks before we had the doctors call us and give us the yes or the no," said Kasi Camden, Blakleigh's mother. "He said, 'We're ready to get this C-monster out of Blakleigh.' And we called everybody and if I could have a video of all of us -- me, Ryan, Maddie, Blakleigh -- all were jumping up and down and screaming and crying and we were calling everybody. It was a bittersweet moment, to say the least."
It wasn't long until the 4-year-old was in the care of Katzenstein and the team at Nemours Children's hospital.
"I just remember walking in and seeing her intubated and her eyes taped, and it was very hard," Camden said. "But I knew Blakleigh was in wonderful hands with a set of doctors there. They were so amazing to us."
Katzenstein, pediatric interventional radiologist Dr. Allison Aguado and the rest of the Nemours team were able to shrink and remove the cancer.
"So when we were presented with Blakleigh's case, we thought this might help her get to resection and we were able to shrink the tumor enough so that she was able to be resected," Aguado said.
Blakleigh is now doing great and is proud of the fact that she's a true survivor.
Blakleigh and her family had been left with mounting medical expenses from her failed treatments and out-of-state travel. But their close-knit community in Illinois banded together in a series of fundraisers and raised more than $22,000 to help the family and make sure Blakleigh received the lifesaving treatment.