ST.JAMES, JAMAICA: MIRACLE BABY! - Keshinae 'Kesh' McFarlane, 3 year-old Lives To Tell The Tale After 15 Surgeries In Yearlong Battle With Liver & Lung Cancer

 Published:Sunday | November 22, 2015Janet Silvera

After 15 surgeries, a year of chemotherapy, and two 10-hour live resectionings, three-year-old Keshinae 'Kesh' McFarlane from Flankers, St James, walked out of the Jackson Memorial Hospital last Friday free of liver cancer.

Three-year-old cancer survivor Keshinae 'Kesh' McFarlane
 of Flankers in St James, who was discharged from the
Jackson Memorial Hospital last Friday after doctors cured
a rare type of liver cancer that she has battled
 for the last year.

Wearing two large wings depicting an angel, the youngster was given a historic farewell party by doctors and nurses at Jackson, 14 months after she was diagnosed with stage-four hepatoblastoma liver cancer at the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay.

Paediatric hepatoblastoma is a childhood malignant liver tumour. When Kesh arrived at Jackson in October 2014 from Jamaica, she was described as skin and bones, with a large protruding abdomen.

"She went into a coma a few days later, and never woke up until January 2015. When she woke up it was unbelievable," exclaimed Kesh's mother, Nicole Brown, adding that her daughter, with the strength of an ox, shocked doctors by pulling out her breathing tube, showing an immeasurable determination to breathe on her own.

It's not as if the doctors had not given up on Kesh. They did during the first week of January, but after the family insisted on continuing the treatment, and the miracle child waking up on the 15th, they, too, fought hard to keep her alive.

CANCER SPREADS TO LUNGS

"During the 10-hour resection-ing, they removed three quarters of her liver, but the liver regenerates itself. The cancer had also spread to her lungs," said 26-year-old Brown.

The treatment protocol for hepatoblastoma is shrinkage of the tumour and resectioning of the liver. "When she arrived here, the tumours had displaced her vital internal organs, including her lungs. She had to be assisted by a ventilator to breathe," Brown toldThe Sunday Gleaner.

A pretty smile from Keshinae 'Kesh' McFarlane

According to the mother, who had to quit her job at the Montego Free Zone, the doctors gave her family all the treatment options and the risks associated with Kesh's condition, but this only served to strengthen their resolve.

At the outset, Brown said her daughter received four rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, including an experimental drug.

"The tumour reduced from 80 centimetres in diameter to 60 centimetres, but due to the extensive damage to her liver, she desperately needed a liver transplantation in order to survive," she pointed out. more