At the tender age of 11, Khaliah-Shay Kaulana Rapozo has been through more medical adventures than most folks eight times her age. Diagnosed with leukemia at the even-more-tender age of three, she has lived with its devastating impacts to her
At the tender age of 11, Khaliah-Shay Kaulana Rapozo has been through more medical adventures than most folks eight times her age.
Diagnosed with leukemia at the even-more-tender age of three, she has lived with its devastating impacts to her body, and seen it go into remission three times, coming back with a vengeance each time it returned.
There have been rounds of chemotherapy and rounds of radiation therapy, and each time the disease rears its ugly head again, the spinal taps and blood tests come to make sure her bone marrow is OK.
The chemotherapy kills both good and bad cells, leaving her young body super-susceptible to infections, diseases, fevers, even viral pneumonia and a high fever that sent her into shock and landed her in the intensive care unit recently.
Each time the cancer returns from its hiding place, it also shortens her life expectancy. And the cancer will keep returning if she stays on her chemo-only therapy.
Still, her smile lights up the room. And never once has she asked “why me?”
The daughter of Curtis Rapozo and Valerie Gallardo of Wailua Houselots hasn’t been able to attend much school with her fifth-grade classmates at King Kaumuali’i Elementary School this year, yet has kept an amazingly upbeat attitude for a small child who has been through so much.
Along the way, she has questioned why there has to be so much sickness and disease in the world, and provides some comfort to her mother by saying all things happen for a reason.
Some people get picked to go through things like this to make others better, she says, showing wisdom well beyond her years.
And if she leaves the earthly realm before her mother and father, she promises to ask Jesus to send them a baby without leukemia.
“She touched everybody around her in her own way,” said Gallardo.
Then, the little girl in the little girl returns. “The chemo is disgusting because you always throw up,” said Rapozo, not ashamed to show stubs of hair trying to grow back after her latest dose of chemotherapy.
On an eligibility list to receive a bone-marrow transplant that will lengthen if not save her life, the youngest Rapozo and family are preparing for a trip to Seattle and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (www.fhcrc.org), a cutting-edge facility where the medical director won a 2001 Nobel Prize for medicine.
While she was under the care of Kapi’olani Hospital, a national search yielded two potential bone-marrow matches. Being an only child denies her the chance that a sibling might share enough biological commonalties to make him or her an able donor. Statistics show that one in four siblings are genetic matches.
Another promising match came from a relatively new technique of identifying blood from the umbilical cord. The cord-blood match is a way of fighting illnesses discovered through studies similar to stem-cell research.
The medical bills throughout the years have been astronomical, but the coverage the family has pays nearly all the costs. A recent two-week stay at Kapi’olani came with an $80,000 bill. Insurance covered most of that.
The family is looking for help with travel and lodging expenses for the Seattle stay.
Curtis Rapozo works for Jas W. Glover, Ltd. at Halfway Bridge, and Gallardo is on modified leave from her work as administrative assistant at Menehune Water Company, Inc.
No date has been set for the travel yet, but when the call comes it will be because the matching donor marrow and blood are on their way to Seattle, and the family must be there as quickly as possible as well.
If the transplant happens, she will undergo eight or nine days of heavy chemotherapy, which if everything goes well may be the last doses she’ll ever need.
Predictably, the family does a lot of praying together, hoping for more quality years with the little girl who at the tender age of five won the Tiny Miss Kaua’i crown and still loves to perform songs, dances, comedy and other sketches before friends and family.
Her family and friends have established a fund through any Bank of Hawai’i location, and checks should be made payable to Friends of Khaliah-Shay Kaulana Rapozo. If the checks can’t be dropped off at any Bank of Hawai’i branch, they can be mailed to Friends of Khaliah-Shay Kaulana Rapozo, P.O. Box 1852, Lihu’e, HI 96766.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
