ALLSMI LES

Maddi’s heart was set on kindergarten. Kennedy Krieger made sure cancer wouldn’t get in the way.

It was the morning of Maddi’s big day—her first day of kindergarten. She’d been looking forward to it for as long as she could remember. Waving at everyone and giddy with excitement, she told her parents, Amanda and Megan, she would walk to her classroom all by herself.

“She was all smiles, with her feeding tube, double lumen Hickman” (a central line for medication), “no hair and backpack as big as she was,” Megan says.

Six months earlier, in March of 2022, Maddi, now 6, had been diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma, a fast-growing type of cancer. It had started out as a tiny lump in her cheek but had quickly spread through the soft tissue of her face. To treat the tumor, doctors administered chemotherapy drugs both intravenously and intrathecally— injected directly into her spinal canal. Maddi was in the hospital for weeks. Megan decorated her hospital room like a schoolroom, and they did pre-K schoolwork when they could. Over the summer, once Maddi was back at home in Carroll County, Maryland, Amanda and Megan started noticing some neurological side effects—challenges in her cognition and learning—from the chemo. One of her physicians referred her to Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Oncology Clinic, part of the Institute’s Department of Neuropsychology.