Healing hearts: Great Falls donations assist families
Collectively, Great Falls has a pretty big heart.
Just ask Cody Lambert, the family of Daisy Hader and the parents of Scarlett Brown.
Each of the three are undergoing some kind of medical treatment for a rare and difficult disease or unknown disorder and they’ve watched as their neighbors, co-workers, friends and family have donated more than $25,000 to support their medical battles.
“It just helps you get through the day and not cry,” said Becky Brown, who was in a hospital room with her 3-year-old daughter Scarlett in Salt Lake City a day after she had brain surgery. “It helps ease a lot of stress.”
As Lolly Hader watches her 7-year-old daughter Daisy struggle to breathe on her own and be fed via feeding tubes at Seattle Children’s Hospital, she’s comforted to know her family and Daisy’s classmates are doing what they can to ease some of their pain.
“It’s absolutely amazing to have that much love and support coming from home,” she said.
Lambert, 28, is grateful the cantaloupe-sized tumor discovered next to his heart didn’t kill him just before Christmas.
“I was supposed to die,” he said. He was airlifted to Seattle from Great Falls for treatment.
Though Scarlett, Daisy and Cody are receiving top-notch medical care, their journeys to better health are far from over and they and their families are feeling the pain of what prolonged health battles can do to their health and their wallets.
Scarlett Brown
Since the day she was born, Scarlett has struggled with many illnesses and health conditions that doctors are still trying to identify.
But when her parents, Josh and Becky Brown, look at her, they see a little girl with a grin that can light up a room.
“She’s the happiest little girl in the world,” Josh Brown said.
She’s also a little girl who has undergone multiple surgeries – including brain surgery just last week – as doctors try to identify some of the 30 genes that are missing from her DNA. Doctors have only identified what three of them do.
Becky had a healthy pregnancy, but Scarlett was born with six toes on each foot and both her fingers and toes were webbed together at birth. These resulted in surgeries when she was 1 to fix the problem, but before that, she had three different eye surgeries at 6, 7 and 8 months.
“She’s had a lot of stuff done,” Josh said.
One of the missing genes means Scarlett is prone to developing diabetes. She’s also prone to seizures, which have caused some developmental delays, and all of this impacts the blood vessels in her brain.
Josh said they were under the impression Scarlett was likely to start having seizures when she was older, so it caught them off guard on Dec. 30 when one of those vessels ruptured and she started bleeding into her brain.
The family was flown to Salt Lake City immediately via Mercy Flight and on Tuesday, the surgery was performed to successfully repair the vessel. But Scarlett is by no means out of the woods. She’s going to have to be on anti-seizure medications for the foreseeable future, will be making more trips to Salt Lake City and will definitely be getting at least one MRI a year.
Her parents are both working. Josh Brown is a recruitment and retention specialist for the Montana Air National Guard and Becky Brown is a nurse. Because of Scarlett’s prolonged stay in Salt Lake City, Becky has had to go on unpaid status.
Josh Brown admits at first he felt guilty when his brother set up their donation page on the website youcaring.com. They have good health insurance. They will be OK. But he acquiesced after his brother insisted people wanted to be able to demonstrate their support.
“It’s just been tremendous. I can’t keep up with (all the donors),” he said. “I feel horrible, but at the same time, blessed.”
Daisy Hader
Technically, the 7-year-old daughter of Justin and Lolly Hader is in lung failure right now. But really, Lolly said doctors have yet to determine what exactly it is that has caused her daughter significant health problems since she was a baby and now has her laying in a hospital bed in Seattle.
“We’re hanging tough,” Lolly said. “Daisy is a spunky, feisty character. She is one tough cookie.”
Daisy remains in the ICU at Seattle Children’s Hospital. When Daisy was 3, doctors believed she might have a metabolic disorder, but couldn’t pin down the type. She’s had several hospital stays over the years.
Then, almost a year-and-a-half ago, Daisy was coughing so much her family thought she had asthma. They visited a pulmonologist in Billings who referred the Haders to a pulmonologist in Seattle, where they did more exams. Doctors said she might have a neuromuscular or mitochondrial disease, but again, Lolly said there was no definitive answer.
In early January, Daisy was having trouble breathing and was taken to Benefis Health System. Lolly said they stayed there about a week and was having trouble eating. Doctors determined it was best to send her to Seattle Children’s Hospital for intensive care.
But keeping her fed has been a challenge. The traditional feeding tubes made her sick and she had a bad reaction to the anesthesia. They had to insert a feeding tube into her stomach and intestines, which has still been a challenge, according to Lolly. She and her sister take turns staying up at night to make sure Daisy doesn’t aspirate.
“It’s awful,” Lolly said. “It’s like a nightmare.”
The next step was to get genetic testing done on both Daisy and her parents. They are still awaiting the results and perhaps then there can be some answers on how to treat Daisy’s condition. On Friday she moved from the ICU to the pulmonology floor for more chronic care. But there’s still a long ways to go.
“Every day we have a team huddle,” she said.
On days when Daisy is feeling better, she has a teacher who comes in and works with her so she can stay up with her school work. Because of their prolonged stay in Seattle, Lolly has lost her job in Great Falls.
Lolly said they’re in the process of applying for Medicaid to assist with the thousands of dollars in medical bills they are acquiring. Daisy’s family at Sunnyside Elementary School has organized a bingo night and dessert raffle on Feb. 26 at the school to assist with medical costs. The party will run from 6 to 8 p.m.
A GoFundMe account has collected more than $15,000 for Daisy and her family.
Lolly said she’s stunned and overwhelmed by the support. It’s hard being away from home and the rest of Daisy’s family, including her older sister Riley.
“It makes me cry,” Lolly said.
Cody Lambert
Normally when Dr. Bryan Martin, oncologist at Benefis Sletten Cancer Institute, sees a scan showing a tumor the size of a cantaloupe encroaching on a heart, it is after an autopsy has been performed.
This time it was the scan of 28-year-old Cody Lambert, a recent Great Falls transplant who came into the hospital just before Christmas with extreme exhaustion, swollen legs and a swollen neck.
“It’s what we call a showstopper,” Martin said. “You will see that, but not in someone who is sitting in the waiting room.”
Lambert, who was working full time as a retail store manager but didn’t have insurance, was never someone who wanted to go to the doctor. He thought maybe it was an allergic reaction he was having to some of the cats that live near the house he shares with his girlfriend.
Perhaps it was pneumonia. He certainly wasn’t thinking it was cancer. He was admitted to Benefis to try to figure out what was going on. He was referred to Martin immediately after the scans showed a cantaloupe-sized tumor growing in his chest and invading his right atrium and ventricle. Martin said it was squeezing off his blood flow, hence the swelling. When he met with him, the veins in Lambert’s neck were almost standing up.
“I said, ‘I’m Dr. Martin and you’re going to Seattle,’” Martin said. “It was a cancer problem and life-threatening.”
Lambert flew out to Seattle and Martin said he instructed his family to get out there, too.
For years, his family has been spread across the country. He and his siblings were split up at times in foster care when they were growing up in Billings. He hasn’t seen several family members in years.
Five of his 10 siblings were able to get to Seattle to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with their brother.
“I brought everybody together, which is kind of nice,” he said. “I met my nieces for the first time.”
Martin said Lambert was officially diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Simply removing a tumor of that size through surgery isn’t possible. First, removing it from the heart surgically could kill him, and second, it’s a blood cancer, and chemotherapy – before it treated any other types of cancers – was designed to treat blood cancers.
He completed his first round of chemotherapy in Seattle, spent time recovering and came back to Great Falls. He’s now had his second round of chemo. Lambert said it takes him about 10 days to recover from each treatment.
“I feel so much better than when I first went in,” Lambert said.
For one, he’s lost the 60 pounds of swelling that happened when he wasn’t getting the right blood flow. Additionally, scans show that the chemo is doing its job.
Martin said the tumor shrunk and has regressed out of Lambert’s heart. But he possibly has another six rounds of chemotherapy ahead of him and radiation.
Lambert said he wasn’t healthy enough to work, so he lost his job. His employer has been supportive and helped his family with gas money to get out to Seattle. But there is still a stack of bills piling up at his house.
If he was stubborn about going to the doctor, he’s even more stubborn about asking for help. But with a stack of medical bills, his sister set up the GoFundMe account.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful for it,” he said. “I just don’t want to ask.”
So his doctor will make a shameless plug for him.
“Tell everyone Dr. Martin says, ‘people should help.’” Martin said.
Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Cates at 791-1463. Follow her on Twitter @GFTrib_KCates.
How to help
To assist with Scarlett, Daisy and Cody’s medical expenses:
•Scarlett: http://bit.ly/1mxDAFd
•Daisy: https://www.gofundme.com/vmz5fw