Season to Share: As 4-year-old battles cancer, family needs help supporting themselves
As an infant Amy Galeano was always getting sick, and she never stayed healthy for long. Yet every trip to the doctor ended the same way.
“She had constant fever,” recalled her mother, Karina Castaneda Medina, “and the doctor would say it’s just an infection.”
The frustrated mother eventually decided she’d had enough. Returning home from a housekeeping job one day, she picked up her sick daughter and drove her to a hospital.
There, a concerned doctor ordered up tests. Soon Amy’s family learned she wasn’t just suffering routine infections. She had acute lymphocytic leukemia, a potentially fatal cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow.
The discovery threw the family of four into a frightening world of physically taxing medical treatments, lengthy hospitalizations and isolation.
Not only did Amy start an aggressive chemotherapy regimen, she had to socially distance to protect her weakened, still-developing immune system. Frequent infections meant that, more often than not, she slept in a hospital bed instead of at home.
Season to Share 2023: Charity drive features families battling consequences of major illness
Now 4, Amy has spent about half of her life in the hospital, her parents estimate.
When she’s not hospitalized, she passes most of her time at home with Castaneda Medina, who had to quit her housekeeping job to care for her full-time. The family now relies solely on the income of Amy’s father, Javier Galeano, an auto mechanic.
On good days, Amy plays with toys in the yard of her Lake Worth Beach home, paints herself with makeup or watches videos. The only other child she can interact with regularly is her 9-year-old sister Alondra.
To run errands with Amy in tow, Castaneda Medina has had to learn the ebbs and flows of local businesses, timing her visits to when the fewest people are at stores and supermarkets to reduce the risk of infection.
Occasionally, she says, she’ll bring Amy and her sister to Amy’s favorite place: a local trampoline center where she can jump to her heart’s content. But it is only when Amy is feeling well and only during non-peak times on certain days of the week, when the risk of close contact with other children is lowest.
Amy has responded well, so far, to more than a year of aggressive chemotherapy sessions. But she remains in treatment, and the doses have taken a hard toll.
“She has had a very rocky road,” said Michelle O’Boyle, the pediatric oncology patient care navigator at the Kids Cancer Foundation. "She’s had a lot of infections, she’s been in the (pediatric intensive care unit) several times.”
“A lot of these kids don’t die from the cancer,” she added. “They die from the infection they’ll get.”
Complicating the parents’ ability to navigate these complexities are other family health concerns.
Amid the stress of raising a cancer-stricken child, Castaneda Medina suffered multiple heart attacks last year and had to have a stent placed. She had brushed off the fatigue and chest pain at first, she recalled, and her heart problems were only diagnosed when she fell ill during one of Amy’s many hospital stays.
If all goes well, Amy's chemotherapy treatments could end in December, but then she would face several more months of social isolation while her immune system recovers.
Only then can she hope to begin normal childhood.
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Amy Galeano's Wish
As Amy works to rid her body of cancer, her parents need help providing a comfortable, caring home environment for her and Alondra. Amy's family needs donations to help cover the costs of maintaining their family on a reduced income while Amy's mother dedicates herself to overseeing her care and treatment. That includes money to help pay for rent, car insurance, electric bills and other fixed costs. To pass the days in their home, Amy would benefit from a new play kitchen, with toy dishes, pots pans and food. Castaneda Medina, Amy and Alondra could also use new clothes and shoes, as well as a pair of roller shoes for Alondra.
Nominated by: Kids Cancer Foundation
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Andrew Marra is a reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network. Reach him by email at amarra@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Charity: Palm Beach County child with cancer, family needs donation
