ROCKINGHAM — When 7-year-old Kyra Cade did not seem to recover as quickly as other members of her family from an illness making its way through the home, parents Jerrid Cade and Jewell Ziriax did what most parents would do.

“She had contracted what we thought was the stomach virus that we had all had,” Cade said. “There was vomiting and diarrhea. So we let that take its course. That lasted about five days, but then the weekend started and she got a fever and she was drinking, but she wasn’t eating.”

Ziriax believed Kyra had the same sickness as the rest of the family, even though “she vomitted less than any of us” but had a fever that the others didn’t have.

“She was laying around more than she usually did,” she said. “But we just thought it was the virus making it harder for her to get up.”

Ziriax said that the following week she sent Kyra to school Monday and Tuesday, believing she was a little better. But Kyra was sent home each day with fever.

Cade called Kyra’s pediatrician Tuesday afternoon and said he was worried about her, but he was assured over the phone that his daughter would be fine.

“But I was out in the parking lot and just sat there for a few minutes, and I decided to take her to Richmond Memorial Hospital,” he said.

At the hospital, Cade and Ziriax said they were told Kyra might have a kidney infection. But after about an hour they were told their daughter needed to be taken to Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte.

“They didn’t really say there was a problem with her blood,” Cade said.

“But they had taken blood, and so we knew it was something to do with it,” Ziriax said.

Ziriax rode in the ambulance with Kyra, and when they arrived they learned her blood count was low. Kyra received blood and platelet transfusions, and the family spent the night to be near her.

“Her hemoglobin was a 3.5 when we got to Levine’s,” Cade said. “It should have been more like 16.”

The next day, Ziriax said, doctors told the family Kyra had leukemia. They wanted to take her to surgery and start chemotherapy.

“We started taking her to Charlotte to a clinic twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays,” Ziriax said. “She also had lumbar punctures and bone marrow aspirations.”

Cade and Ziriax explained that after several starts and stops, doctors gradually realized they were battling something more than leukemia. Their daughter, they said, had a rare condition called Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis.

According to the Johns Hopkins health library online, “Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis is a rare disease that usually occurs in infants and young children. It may also occur in adults. Children usually inherit the disease. In adults, many different conditions, including infections and cancer, can cause HLH.”

After learning of the genetic link in children’s infections, Kyra’s parents became worried about their other children.

“We had to start thinking about getting them tested,” Cade said. “We’re going to have them tested to see if they have the trait that causes HLH.”

He explained that his daughter’s health took a rapid turn for the worse, and that by May 7, Kyra’s white blood cell count dropped to 0.1 and never rebounded. She was no longer being treated for the leukemia.

“And that’s what you need,” Ziriax said. “Those neutrophils are how you fight off infections.”

Kyra’s immune system got weaker by the day, Cade said, and later she developed severe pain in her abdomen.

“She’d never really had any pain up until then,” Cade said. “And they had to start giving her pain medication.”

To top it all off, Kyra contracted rhinovirus, known as the common cold — a condition that countless people endure on a yearly basis, but can cause serious complications in patients with compromised immune systems.

“She developed ear infections and they treated them with drops and a bunch of antibiotics,” Cade said.

She also had pneumonia, which was aggravated by a secondary, upper respiratory infection.

“They came in on a Sunday night at one o’clock in the morning and told us her infection had grown some,” Ziriax said. “Then at 4 a.m. they came back and said the results had come back and it was the same bacteria, it was antibiotic resistant, and they had to figure out which antibiotic to use.”

By midweek, Kyra was in the intensive care unit. She was having trouble breathing on her own.

“They took x-rays,” Cade said. “And suddenly the room was full of doctors. And they never really told us how serious it was, but they said that she would be able to be closely monitored since there could only be two patients in the ICU.”

Kyra went in and out of ICU a number of times, was put on a respirator to assist her breathing and then successfully came off the respirator. But the next bout of breathing trouble came — this time, an oscillator was used to keep her lungs working.

Ziriax and Cade said their daughter’s disease progressed rapidly until she succumbed to her illness on June 17.

“If I could say one thing to other parents, it would be, ‘Never take anything for granted,” Ziriax said. “Because you never know when it will be over.”

Cade agreed, saying he is troubled that children’s cancer claims the lives of so many young people each year, but is the least researched.

“There’s some bad stuff out there,” he said.

Reach reporter Melonie McLaurin at 910-817-2673 and follow her on Twitter @meloniemclaurin.

Melonie McLaurin | Daily Journal Jerrid Cade and Jewell Ziriax hold a plaster cast of their daughter’s hand and a framed photograph of her last birthday. Kyra Cade, 7, died of a rare disease June 17.
https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_Kyra.jpgMelonie McLaurin | Daily Journal Jerrid Cade and Jewell Ziriax hold a plaster cast of their daughter’s hand and a framed photograph of her last birthday. Kyra Cade, 7, died of a rare disease June 17.

By Melonie McLaurin

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