Kinsley McLamore is a great example of how a family can choose to respond to cancer treatment with positivity and an active lifestyle, said Dr. Grace Chandler, one of the doctors who treated the 3-year-old from Johnsburg for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“We see her weekly and she is a happy, playful little girl living her life and going to school,” said Chandler, a pediatric oncologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. “We really encourage the patient and the family to return to as much normalcy as possible during treatment.”

Kinsley is receiving treatment that gives her more freedom, since she doesn’t have to go to the doctor every day to get IV fluids. She has a port in her chest, with tubes running into a backpack. Inside that backpack – pastel pink with a stuffed doll attached – is a pump that supplies her body with blinatumomab, an immunotherapy drug that was approved by the FDA on June 14 for use in children and adults with a certain type of leukemia.

This drug is designed to help Kinsley’s immune system fight the cancer by targeting a molecule at the leukemia cells, Chandler said.

For the next two weeks, Kinsley will no longer need to use the immunotherapy pump. Her port was sealed, allowing her to go swimming at the family pool and cabin in Wisconsin for the first time since her diagnosis on March 21.

Her parents, Rob and Kelsi McLamore, first noticed something was wrong over President’s Day weekend. While her cousins ​​were at the family cabin, Kinsley injured her ankle, but it didn’t seem to heal, Kelsi McLamore said. She had Kinsley miss gymnastics classes for a week to see if it would improve, but then she developed a fever and a stuffy nose, and the foot was still bruised.

Finally, after some back and forth with pediatricians and changing offices, a major blood test was ordered. The pediatrician told them, “You need to come in to see Lurie today,” Rob McLamore said.

Lurie diagnosed them with leukemia, he said. Kinsley arrived there on a Tuesday and began chemotherapy on Friday.

“That was the hardest part, letting her go, when they took her to surgery” to implant the port, Rob McLamore said. “I heard the word cancer and that she was dying.”

But the actual prognosis for Kinsley is much better.

“There is a plan, and the outcome is quite positive,” said Kelsi McLamore. But it is also a long-term plan. Kinsley’s treatment is expected to last 2½ to 3 years. She will also participate in Lurie’s long-term follow-up to see what effect the treatments have on her later life.

The Survivors Taking Action and Responsibility, or STAR, clinic at Lurie’s cares for children with cancer starting at age five after their initial diagnosis.

“She will eventually be an adult survivor of childhood cancer,” said Dr. Sara Zarnegar-Lumley, another oncologist at Lurie. “With long-term monitoring … we will also see the long-term results of the therapies.”

Studies have shown that those who remained active during treatment often responded better, Zarnegar-Lumley said.

Swimming has always been Kinsley’s outlet, Kelsi McLamore said. While they were watching the Olympics, she went to the family pool and stood on the diving board, but couldn’t get in because of the treatment. The plan was that once her port was sealed, there would be plenty of cannonballs.

“She has so much personality and it’s so wonderful to see her be her bubbly, happy self week after week,” Chandler said. “We expect her to do very well.”