Arden's Story

""Please help kids like me be strong..."

When Arden Cantwell lost her hair, she cheerfully affixed a pink hairpiece to her baseball cap and flashed her famous grin. No one notices she is bald.

When she rides home in the back seat of her mom’s car after a grueling round of chemo, she sings and infuses everyone in the car with her undaunted spirit. No one notices she is sick.

During the holidays, when she was asked to speak to a radio audience at an STBTC blood drive, she thought of others, pleading, “Please give blood to help kids like me be strong.” and then she added, “Merry Christmas.” Everyone notices Arden Cantwell is one amazing and indomitable little girl.

Arden is an inspiration – a beautiful, winsome, happy child who fills a room with joy and could convince anyone to roll up a sleeve and give. Because without the blood that strangers have donated to help kids like Arden, she would not have survived to see her fifth birthday.

A Frightening Diagnosis
It was September 12, 2006 when Kim Cantwell, an RN who had been associate director of blood drawing services and apheresis at STBTC until she “retired” to be a stay-at-home mom, noticed something awry with her three-year-old daughter. “Arden had not been feeling well and I noticed petechiae all over her tummy (tiny red blood-filled dots) and I raced her to the hospital ER. My mother, also an RN, and my husband, met us there and doctors diagnosed her immediately. Her white cells were out of control and her good cells were very low. They transported her by ambulance to Methodist Children’s Hospital and immediately began aggressive treatment,” her mom remembers of that frightening day. Her diagnosis: acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL).

Kim says, “Too many white cells can do all sorts of bad things – they can clog up a child’s little circulation system and cause strokes, bleeding in the brain. We caught her in time; in fact she was asymptomatic and doctors believe the ALL had been in her system less than two weeks. Arden was considered high risk, but she is categorized with an 87.7% cure rate. We are optimistic and pray every day that she will fall into that 87.7%”

The Awesome Power of a Blood Transfusion
Kim has long been a believer in the power of blood to save lives. “I was truly passionate about what we did when I worked at STBTC … but never did I imagine I’d be on the other side of the fence,” she admits. Now she has seen first hand the awesome power of a blood transfusion. “To see your child, listless, tired, pale and grouchy when she needs a transfusion, and then to see what a unit of blood does is a wonderful thing. She perks up, gets happy, feels good, runs around. It truly is amazing. I invite anyone who needs proof to come and watch what the gift of blood does for my daughter.”

Arden’s received an average of two units of blood per month, and she is only one of hundreds of children and adults in the STBTC service area who depend every day on blood donations to survive the rigors of cancer and its treatment.

UPDATE: Arden has finished her last chemotherapy treatment.