How It All Began

On December 6th, 2008, Kya was staying with her grandma and had spent the day at the river. Her cheeks looked a little wind chapped so her grandma began putting vaseline on them. On December 19th, they were not any better and actually looked worse and kind of rashy. She also had developed a prickly looking rash on her elbows and knee caps. We took her to the doctor thinking it was a rash from the infections going around. We treated her for a week for a viral infection. When she was not any better and she was significantly worse our family doctor sent us to a dermatologist in Oklahoma City on Christmas Eve morning. He thought it was atopic dermatitis. We treated her for a week with the steroid creams he provided for us. On New Year's Eve when it wasn't any better we called the dermatologist back. He saw her on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 and did a biopsy on her knee. He told us then that he wasn't sure exactly what it was, but the signs were pointing to a disease called dermatomyositis. However, he couldn't imagine it being that because it is so rare, but he wanted to just make sure that wasn't what we were dealing with. He called us back on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at about 1:45 p.m. and told us the test came back positive and that they were looking for a pediatric rheumatologist to treat her. We received a phone call on Thursday, January 8th, saying that there was a pediatric rheumatologist at Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City who had reviewed her file and wanted to see her at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, January 9th, 2009.