Keegan Davis was lying in a hospital bed with a stomach that wouldn’t stop swelling.
Typhlitis, an inflammation of the large intestine, had caused the 4-year-old’s stomach to expand 6 inches or so, putting pressure on his internal organs. One of his lungs was beginning to shut down.
The only option, doctors said, was cutting Keegan open from his groin to his belly button, leaving the incision open to drain the buildup.
But, his parents were told, the surgery had a mortality rate of 99 to 100 percent.
“They told us we needed to start saying our goodbyes,” his mother, Candice Davis, said.
It was the latest in a line of devastating news for her and her husband, Kenny.
Within a few weeks they had watched Keegan go from a seemingly healthy boy playing baseball to being diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare, aggressive cancer.
The first chemotherapy treatment had zapped Keegan’s immune system, leaving him helpless against the typhlitis.
And now his only chance, his parents were told, wasn’t really a chance at all.
It was the first time they believed they might lose the youngest of their three sons.
Ultimately, another surgeon convinced doctors to try using three small drains to clear the little boy’s 22-pound body of the infection. It would be a slower process, but it might work.
Doctors sedated Keegan and put him on a ventilator for about two weeks.
He shouldn’t have been able to move, Candice said, but he kept pointing toward the right side of the room. Not where his parents were taking turns sleeping on a small couch, but in that vicinity.
Later when they learned what Keegan was pointing at, Candice knew the baby of the family was being protected.
From a cavity to cancer
On Easter Sunday, Keegan was playing baseball with his older brothers, Matthew and Skyler, now 11 and 7. Other than complaining of mouth pain, Keegan appeared healthy that April day. A trip to the dentist revealed a deep cavity, which was filled.
Keegan’s pain continued, which the dentist believed was caused by an infection that antibiotics should clear up in two or three days.
When it didn’t, Candice took him back to the dentist where an X-ray showed a possible abscess. Another antibiotic was prescribed.
But Keegan started getting sick and he wouldn’t eat.
On May 1, Candice took him to the emergency room at Wolfson Children’s Hospital, where doctors said it sounded like her son just didn’t like the medicine.
But, Candice knew her child and she trusted her instinct that something was wrong. Her son, who normally weighed about 32 pounds, was down to 28.
Doctors ran tests but sent him home.
Two days later, Keegan was so tired he couldn’t even talk. His parents decided to see if he’d perk up on a trip to the flea market. When he couldn’t walk, they pushed him around in a shopping cart.
The next day, Keegan was so weak that Candice had to crawl into the bathtub with him to prop him up while she gave him a bath.
She went to work the next day, but when Keegan wasn’t feeling better, Kenny took him back to the emergency room.
As Candice walked through the ER doors that afternoon, she saw her husband’s aunt crying.
The aunt wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, saying she had to talk to the doctor.
When Candice heard the doctor say the word cancer, she fell to the floor in tears. She kept asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s not somebody else’s results?”
When Candice walked into Keegan’s room, she didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want him to know she was scared. “I had to keep looking away,” she said. “I had to be strong.”
She told him they had to do more tests to make sure everything was OK.
When her husband arrived at the hospital, the two devastated parents held each other for a long time in the hallway before going into their son's room. They didn’t have to say anything.
“We knew how each other felt,” she said.
Through his tears, Kenny told Keegan he was sick.
You’re going to have to be strong like Superman, he told his son.
Keegan liked superheroes, so he knew what that meant. Strong like Superman became the mantra for the family.
‘Don’t cut my hair’
The Davises couldn’t help but ask why. Why was Keegan sick, especially when their family had suffered so many losses.
Within the past year, they had lost their 7-year-old niece to leukemia and Kenny’s grandfather to cancer.
In January 2008, Kenny’s mother was killed by his stepfather in a murder-suicide.
“What did we ever do wrong?” Candice wondered.
As they were signing paperwork for a test drug for the initial diagnosis of neuroblastoma, they learned it wasn’t that type of cancer.
The next day, they were told it was Burkitt’s lymphoma. The diagnosis was so rare, she said, that doctors had only treated one case in the past two years at Wolfson.
Kenny and Candice told Keegan’s brothers he was sick, but didn’t tell them it was cancer for a couple of months.
“We just told them some kids get sick and they have to take medicine,” Candice said.
Just a week after being admitted to the hospital, Keegan underwent his first round of chemotherapy. Soon, strands of his blond hair began to fall out.
She knew if her son saw his hair on his pillow it would sadden him.
He loved his dirty-blond hair, which he would sometimes slick back. “He looked so stinking cute,” she said. “Everybody loved his hair.”
They had a hair-cutting party, where several others, including his brothers, agreed to get their hair cut. His brothers were excited to do it. “They’re always like, ‘Make me bald, mommy,’” she said.
But not Keegan, who pleaded, “No, no, no. Don’t cut my hair.”
Finally, after Matthew let his baby brother shave his head, it was Keegan’s turn.
Tears ran down Keegan’s face as they cut his hair.
There were would be many more months of tears for the Davis family.
A protector watching over Keegan
Another side effect of Keegan’s chemo was mucositis, an inflammation and infection that starts in the mouth but can spread as far as the intestines.
Then came the typhlitis, which brought such strong pain that he was on morphine and oxygen.
After the doctors agreed to try the three smaller drains instead of the surgery that would most likely be fatal, there was nothing the Davises could do but wait and pray.
Seeing their son on a ventilator was terrifying.
“A lot of times you see people on a ventilator and they don’t wake back up,” she said. “We were trying to have faith. Trying to pray and hope.”
While sedated, Keegan shouldn’t have been able to respond or even move, she said.
But when he wanted something, he would shake the small Superman key chain a friend had given him. The “ding, ding, ding” sound would alert his parents that he needed something. He couldn’t talk and didn’t open his eyes, Candice said, but he would shake the key chain when his mother talked to him.
Finally, the fluid drained from his body and it was time to take him off the ventilator. The first 30 seconds after they pulled the tube from Keegan’s throat were terrifying for Davises as they watched their boy violently gasping for air.
After not being able to talk for two weeks, the first thing Keegan said was, “Mommy, I love you and I need to poop.”
For the first time in weeks, there was laughter in Keegan’s hospital room.
He wasn’t supposed to remember anything while on the ventilator, Candice said. But he did, including what he was pointing to all those times.
Keegan said he saw Kenny’s grandfather in his room, the same grandfather who had died the previous year.
Candice said the family believed God sent him to help Keegan.
“We knew that’s why he was there,” she said. “He was protecting us.”
Celebrating remission
Keegan’s first stay in the hospital was 66 days, always with at least one of his parents there. Candice would take off from her job as a manager at Piercing Pagoda or Kenny from his at Firestone, where he was a mechanic.
The Jay Fund and others, including an online campaign, helped the family pay bills and some of the mounting medical costs.
Keegan became a favorite at Wolfson, Candice said, with doctors and nurses who heard about his positive attitude stopping by to see him.
He got visits from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office after police learned Keegan wanted to be an officer when he grew up.
When Keegan couldn’t attend his June graduation at Every Child Can Learn, his classmates and teachers surprised him, singing and carrying his diploma as they walked into his hospital.
For several months, chemo continued, with Keegan and the family being in the hospital more than at home. Candice said he spent 115 of 159 days there, including his fifth birthday.
Finally, in October, the news started to improve. Keegan was heading toward remission. They were hesitant to be hopeful.
What if it came back like it did two weeks after their niece’s family was told she was in remission? She died two months later.
They also struggled with celebrating while other families were losing their children to cancer.
One boy was diagnosed the day before Keegan’s birthday in July and died in November.
But finally doctors said it was true. Keegan, whose last chemo treatment was Oct. 11, was in remission.
Kenny called Candice, who was at a conference in Orlando. They say it’s all gone, he told her. They say there are no more cancer cells.
Candice and her co-workers celebrated and cried together.
The conference was at Disney, where Candice bought a train that is under the family’s Christmas tree this year.
The best Christmas gift
To see Keegan today, it’s hard to believe he was so sick. He, Skyler and Matthew run through the house, roughhousing like boys do. They’re about as close as three brothers can be, his mother said. They always have been, especially Skyler and Keegan, who are only 19 months apart.
Keegan will eagerly show the scar from where his “buddy” (the broviac catheter used for chemo treatments) once was in his chest and the scar near his neck where tumors were removed.
And he happily admits being his mommy’s baby. That makes Candice smile.
Keegan has started kindergarten at Whitehouse Elementary School and he’s lost two front teeth.
The boys are excited about Christmas, all with their own ideas of the perfect gifts.
Some you can buy, others you just cherish. Like having three healthy sons, including one whose beautiful hair is growing back.
@editormarilyn
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