Alayah - Fairbanks

We found out that Alayah, age 2, had leukemia on August 27th, 2022 in our hometown of Fairbanks. We went into the hospital thinking she may have had Covid or some other type of illness that would soon be over. Never in a million years did we imagine that she had leukemia. We were medivac-ed immediately to Anchorage leaving behind her dad, two brothers ages 13 and 1, and our dog. We went on to spend the next 5 weeks in the hospital with dad being able to come down on the weekends sometimes with a brother, sometimes by himself.
Being that Fairbanks has no oncologists we are unable to go back home until we’re in maintenance and even then we have to return to Anchorage monthly and any neutropenic fevers or need for blood products will be a medivac back as well.
We moved our whole family down to a  house in Anchorage when we were finally released from Providence in October. We have a home in Fairbanks that we are having to make sure doesn’t freeze up as well. The biggest thing for us was making sure our family stayed as a whole during this time.
Alayah was diagnosed with high-risk favorable B-cell ALL and has responded well to treatment so far. We’ve had our fair share of ups and downs but we’re very blessed to all be together during the hardest thing we’ve ever faced and Katie’s Handprint has absolutely contributed to that.