Bray-Doyle recently got a new student. On Monday, April 8, Kaydence Nelson was made as an honorary Donkey. Nelson is a young girl that has made it through the impossible. Nelson has a special nickname. Her parents started calling her “donkey” because she has been through so much, but she never gave up.

At six years old she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. On July 4 and July 18, her mom got a call from her dad saying he was taking Kaydence to the Emergency Room. The Nelson couple just had a new baby the day before the ER visit. The couple had to hold their happiness of having a baby, and replace it with worry for their other child. Doctors performed CPR for 15 minutes, rupturing both her stomach and intestines. The doctor told her parents she would probably not survive the night, but little “donkey” powered through and survived.

This is where the real miracle comes into play. It only takes 4-6 minutes for brain damage to start occuring, and Nelson was given CPR for 15 minutes. This meant she had to have extensive therapy. She had to learn how to brush her teeth, eat, walk, and had to be re-potty trained.She also had a CT scan to show there were no holes in her stomach or intestines.

A few months later an MRI that was done on her brain showed no brain damage. On top of that she was on dialysis because of reduced kidney function. She also suffered from septic shock to E. coli, which had less than a 20% survival rate. The biggest thing was that her cancer was not responding to the normal chemotherapy, so her family took her to Dallas to receive CarT therapy. A 0.02% chance to the therapy was anaphylactic shock, a deadly case that Nelson has never been through. She was part of that of the small percentage and went into shock. She was the first patient to ever react this way in the Dallas Facility. In mid-March she did a bone marrow test to see how well the treatment was working. When her results came back it showed that she was finally cancer free.

Bray-Doyle math teacher Latesha Margerum is friends with the Nelson family and thought it was important for not only Kaydence, but for the Bray-Doyle students to be a part of this celebration.

“When I learned about Kaydence, I knew we (Bray-Doyle Schools) needed to do something for her,” Margerum said. “Being a teacher means you teach kids more than what’s just in the textbooks. Teaching life lessons and how to treat people kindly is a very important lesson that all teachers should strive to do. I’m so glad we were able to show our students that sometimes it takes just a moment to impact someone in a positive way.”

Nelson has earned the Donkey nickname with all she has been through. She was stubborn and fought back. She embodies the true spirit of the donkey by never giving and continuing to fight.