HOBERG”S — David and Renada Breeden, parents of a blue-eyed, tousle-haired 3 1/2-year-old girl named Karlie, will tell you that believing in miracles is not an option.
Everybody who wants to see this tot defy the up-to-now tumultuous odds against her living with an inoperable brain tumor, they say, must believe because a miracle is all that can save her.
Karlie”s condition, say the Breedens, has been diagnosed by California surgeons who are among the world”s leading specialists on brain tumors. On April 28 of this year, they were told that Karlie, the oldest of their two children, had no more than six at the outside, 12 months to live.
A visitor to the Breedens” Cobb Mountain home will find that not only difficult to mentally process but almost impossible to believe. The area surrounding the house on Grouse Road is enlivened by a busy little blonde who flits around a quiet street on a toy motorized four-wheeler.
Her younger brother, 2-year-old Brody, follows her every maneuver on a similar vehicle. A black dot Karlie”s tiny Chihuahua puppy, Pumpkin bounces around the two children.
Her parents, who have been together for 10 years and married for the last five, adore Karlie. Karlie does not enter your consciousness as a sickly appearing, forlorn child; but a tiny lady with an indomitable spirit.
“You wouldn”t guess that 20 minutes ago she was sick, nauseous like she is every morning,” says Renada. “We gave her some anti-nausea medicine and she”s amazing. One minute she”s hanging over the sink, the next minute she”s on her four-wheeler.”
Her parents describe Karlie as an independent little girl, who makes her own sandwiches, paints her fingernails, dances, plays with her animals, loves to terrorize Brody … and until a trip to Disneyland this spring, she seemed healthy.
“We got back on a Monday,” Renada recalls. “Everybody was tired and Karlie said, My head hurts” and you could tell that her balance was off.”
As David recalls that moment, “We walked into the garage and she went to step into the house, but fell and hit her head. I told her to stand up, but she couldn”t.”
With no improvement in Karlie”s condition the following morning, her parents rushed her to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. “They did a CT scan and came out and said Sit down …” Renada remembers. “They told us she had a mass in her brain stem and were going to helicopter her to Oakland Children”s Hospital, and there wasn”t enough room for us to go. So, they”re telling us, There”s something really wrong with your baby. We”re taking your baby on a helicopter, and you have to meet us there.”
“Our whole world at that moment was spinning out of control.”
After Karlie underwent an MRI the following day, the Breedens heard their little girl”s death sentence. Karlie was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma.
The condition”s generic name is brain stem gloom. It is located in a part of the brain called the pons, which is the part that controls breathing, heartbeat, the digestive system and other functions critical to life.
The tumor in Karlie”s head had swollen to the point that it blocked the fluid that travels down the spinal cord, David and Renada were told, and the pons were “tangled together like two balls of yarn.” And that ruled out surgery.
A shunt and steroids have relieved the pressure in Karlie”s brain, the Breedens say, and radiation and chemotherapy have shrunk the tumor enough to buy a little time.
“But once they reduce it, it can grow back again,” says Renada, “and when that happens there”s nothing they can do for her.”
Since learning that, the Breedens have frantically searched for their miracle.
“We cannot accept that we will lose her in our lifetime, especially in less than 12 months,” they say.
Renada continuously looks for answers to what”s happening to Karlie and learns all she can about inoperable brain tumors on the Internet and in volumes by the most knowledgeable experts in medicine on a global scale. She sends e-mail questions to the experts she finds and waits too often for responses that never come.
“We don”t know why she gets sick every morning,” says Renada. “There is a lot of stuff the doctors don”t tell you. There is a lot about this they don”t know. They don”t tell you that when they give your 3-year-old steroids she”s going to become a complete animal. They gave it to her and she literally was psycho, out of control, wouldn”t listen.”
During a nightmarish, 12-day stay at Oakland Children”s Hospital in which David and Renada alternated sitting up all night in a bedside chair, neither child nor parents slept and Karlie, said David, “started doing some crazy stuff.”
“Cussing, yelling, screaming,” he recalls. “She tried to scratch my eyes out and did some foul things to another little girl who was in the room.”
David visits specialists at Stanford and elsewhere.
For a while the cross-eyes, one of the effects of Karlie”s condition, abated, “but now they are coming back in and pointing at her nose,” David says. “I have talked to a huge circle (of doctors) but got no answers.”
While rummaging for something, anything on earth to avert the growth of the tumor, they appeal to a Higher Authority.
Five hundred people a year die from inoperable brain tumor, David says. “There”s never been a success. But I keep telling God, If you show us a miracle more people are going to hear about this and more people are going to believe.””
To a visitor, there is a calmness to David and Renada that belies the trauma and fear in their home.
“People probably don”t know what to expect from us,” Renada says. “We have our days. Right now, someone is here, but that person can leave and we”ll fall apart. I”ve had to fight back the tears when I”ve talked to people on the phone and act like my life is normal. This is tough on both of us.”
There had been clues even before Disneyland that something was not right with Karlie, she said. The little girl”s behavior had changed, but doctor visits didn”t provide a reason why. Renada even saw a counselor to see if she was doing something wrong.
“They (doctors) never saw it, but once she looked at me and her eyes were red and I thought she was possessed or something,” said Renada. “I knew something was wrong. I knew it, I knew it.”
What does Karlie know?
“She knows she”s sick, she knows she has a tumor and she”s got a shunt in her head and a port where the needle goes in, so they don”t have to put it in her arm,” Renada says. “She says stuff without us saying anything, but has picked up from conversations she has overheard.
“Like she told David, I don”t want to be a miracle,” but we told her we want you to be.””
Karlie knows also that she must eat her “pudding” every day, because Renada says, “There”s no way around your taking this.” The pudding contains the “chemo” Karlie must consume daily.
“It”s nasty, it”s battery acid,” says David, who says he has to wear rubber gloves when handling the substance. “Once I got a little puff in my eye and it about closed shut.”
Despite the fact that Brody is still an infant, Karlie”s condition has seemingly found a way into this tot”s world, too. Lying awake one night, David heard his son say, “Why does sissy have to die? Why?”
But the Breedens refuse to believe Karlie will die.
“She is going to be a miracle because she”s so strong,” says Renada.
“Just believe that this one time it”s really going to happen,” says David.
Contact John Lindblom at jlwordsmith@mchsi.com
