Amairy

Children’s Health's Whole-Family Support Gives Mom Hope 

Yamira looked at the doctor with bleary eyes. It was a late December evening in 2022, and he’d come to the exam room to share test results that would explain her daughter’s puzzling symptoms.  

Earlier in the day, then-4-year-old Amairy and her mom had been sent to the Emergency Department at Children’s Health in Plano by their pediatrician, after a routine exam revealed that the little girl’s tummy felt hard and looked a bit swollen. Her blood pressure was also abnormally high. 

“When the doctor came, he told me Amairy had a tumor on her kidney and my mind started racing,” Yamira said about the cancerous clear cell sarcoma of the kidney, an extremely rare kidney tumor. 

Two months prior, Yamira’s dad had died from cancer and now Amairy, her curious, creative girl and the light of her life, was being diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor.  

“I was in shock,” Yamira said. 

An unexpected turn of events    

Amairy’s condition required a stay on Children’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in Plano. Once there, her surgeon recommended chemotherapy to shrink the large, stage 3 tumor on her right kidney before the team could safely take the organ out.  

Days on the PICU turned into a month-long stay. Then shorter hospital stays and clinic visits became the duo’s new normal until mid-March, when the cancerous kidney was finally ready to be removed. 

“We had the surgery at Children’s Health in Dallas,” Yamira said. “They took her back to the operating room at 7:30 in the morning thinking it would be four hours, but it turned into a really big surgery that lasted more than 12 hours.”  

Amairy’s tumor had spread to her vena cava — veins that collect deoxygenated blood from the whole body and bring it back to the heart for new oxygen — and liver. And because of the tumor’s growth, more than half of her liver had to be removed.  

After the surgery, a week of radiation and a three-month hospital stay with more chemotherapy followed. All total, Amairy needed eight additional procedures to get rid of excess fluid in her liver and belly caused by the cancer-fighting therapies. 

Making friends everywhere  

When you first meet Amairy, now 6, she can be shy, but her reserved nature certainly doesn’t define her.  

“Once she’s comfortable in a place, she wants to know everyone and everything that’s going on,” Yamira said, laughing. “I know she feels safe here because she’s spent more than six months combined as an inpatient, and in all that time, she’s only asked twice if we could go home.”  

Though Amairy is frail, she likes getting out of bed and making friends, especially in her favorite spot: the playroom, where team members celebrated her with a birthday party.  

A sports junkie, Amairy also loves rolling around the hospital with her mom on EzyRollers, and she’s been known to have two-hour dance parties with her child life specialist. This summer, her nurses decorated her room with a large ball, a slide, a special blanket and butterflies.  

"The day she saw the decorations, Amairy said to me, ‘Mom, now I can say this is my room.’ Her team makes her life really happy,” Yamira said. 

By herself but never alone 

Shortly after her only child was diagnosed with cancer, Yamira quit her job in the public school system as an English-as-a second-language aide.  

“There was no question that I would be by Amairy’s side 24/7, but I was sick with worry about how we would survive,” she said.  

To her amazement, social workers in Plano and Dallas enlisted the Children’s Health Financial Assistance Program for help. Funded mainly by gifts from compassionate donors, the program helps pay her rent and provides her with meal cards for use at the hospital cafeteria.  

“We live paycheck-to-paycheck and I don’t have much savings,” Yamira said. “I’m forever grateful to Children’s Health for helping me and so many other families, too. I’m also thankful for all the people in our community who give so generously. Their support allows me to focus on Amairy’s health without constantly worrying about losing our apartment and having nowhere to go.” 

And Yamari said the support isn’t just financial.  

“I’m usually by myself — most of my family lives in Puerto Rico,” she said. “I love that we have an entire medical team, even a psychologist. They listen to me and tell me that, as Amairy’s mom, I know her best. They’re also always asking me how I’m doing, and if I’m okay.” 

Yamira pauses for a moment, adding that she’s anxious as Amairy moves into the next stage of her care with occupational and physical therapy, along with lots of follow-up appointments with specialists.  

"“I’m still nervous about what the future will bring,” she said. “I do know that if I can’t find hope at Children’s Health, I won’t find it anywhere.”

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