Prognosis good for Liberty Elementary student

She was bubbling and laughing and bouncing off the walls one day and the next day she was at the doctor’s office hearing a horrifying diagnosis.

That’s about how fast the events of the last few weeks have happened for Kolbye Kaye Hamilton, 6, of Sallisaw.

“She woke up that morning and said her side hurt. She had very obvious blood in her urine,” Kolbye Kaye’s mother, Debra Hamilton, said of the morning of Sept. 8, the day all this began.

“I took her to see Dr. (Jennifer) Scofous here in Sallisaw. Dr. Scofous sent us to Sparks in Fort Smith for a CT scan. They thought she might be passing a kidney stone and blood clots.

“They sent us home with antibiotics. Several days later she was still hurting and there was still a lot of blood in her urine. We knew something wasn’t right. We got Dr. Scofous to refer us to Children’s Hospital in Tulsa. Our first appointment was on the 15th. They did a scan with dye in it,” Hamilton said.

Within 24 hours the pediatric urologist called them to tell them they needed to get back as soon as possible.

“They called us on Friday and said they had found a large mass on her right kidney,” she said. “That’s when we learned about the nephrectomy, the removal of a kidney.”

Less than a week later, her happy, bubbly daughter went into surgery for more than three hours to remove a kidney that had been diagnosed as a stage II Wilms tumor.

Hamilton said the doctors explained that Wilms tumors typically occur in children under the age of eight years old.

“They explained the tumor is a result of a kidney cell that failed to mature before she was born. After a child is born the cell tries to catch up and instead forms a cancer,” Hamilton said.

Doctors operated on Sept. 21 to remove the cancerous kidney. Pathology reports indicated that the cancer had spread to four of the 11 lymph nodes removed with the kidney.

“They put in a port for chemo,” Hamilton said. “Kolbye Kaye has named it Sally. She’s got a good attitude about it. She knows it’s going to save her life.”

Hamilton said the doctors expected her to remain in intensive care for three to five days, but she did so well she was out of ICU in 24 hours and home on Sept. 25.

“She feels good right now. She’ll be homebound, but if she feels like going to school she will be able to,” Hamilton said.

Kolbye Kaye is in Gloria Neer’s first grade class at Liberty Elementary School in Sallisaw.

The next step for this energetic first grader will be 18-24 weeks of chemotherapy and possibly radiation. Blood work every week will be a necessity.

“She’s got a good attitude now, but she doesn’t know about all the side effects, like losing her hair,” Hamilton said.

She said the prognosis is very good as 90 percent of children with a stage II Wilms tumor survive.

“The next year is going to be hard,” Hamilton said. “Up to six months of chemo and then six months for her immune system to get back to normal.”

Family and friends have set up a number of benefits to help the family with the costs of traveling to the hospital and related expenses.