Wayland girl fends off three maladies

At 12 years of age, Kathryn Coffin has battled more health problems than most people do in a lifetime. Kathryn has taken medication to control her grand mal seizures. At the age of 10, she was informed she had Type I juvenile diabetes, which requires her to take four shots of insulin every day. As if that were not enough, she learned months later that she had thyroid cancer. Surgery removed most of the malignant cells and subsequent treatments appear to have killed the rest.

Kathryn was born to Suzanne Coffin of Wayland on April 29, 1999. By all accounts, she was a perfectly healthy baby girl. However, she began having febrile seizures when she was only 1 ½ years old. The seizures were triggered by a spike in her body temperature. Suzanne said it was a scary time, and she even feared she could lose her daughter to the seizures.

?She had a seizure so bad she turned black,? said Suzanne. ?She got very sick. She had a urinary tract infection, and that spiked her temperature. They thought she had meningitis, but that wasn?t it.?

At the age of 8, she suffered another round of seizures after contracting Lyme disease from a tick. The tick bit her at the base of her skull. She was treated for Lyme disease, but it was not until a week later when she experienced a seizure. She and her mother were at a restaurant in Ottumwa. Kathryn was playing a driving video in the restaurant when the seizure hit.

?She tensed up, she twitched and she was unresponsive,? remembered Suzanne. ?It was scary to watch.?

Suzanne took Kathryn to the emergency room where she was treated and released. Kathryn took anti-seizure medication for a year after the episode. However, her mother noticed earlier this year that some of the symptoms of the seizures had returned. For instance, Kathryn at times suddenly stops what she?s doing for a few seconds and is unresponsive. When she regains consciousness, she does not remember what she was just doing.

?She likes to sing, and we were singing a song in the car once,? said Suzanne. ?She stopped in the middle of the song and spaced out. When she came back, I asked her, ?Did you fuzz out?? She said, ?Did I?? And I said, ?Yeah, you did.? I asked her, ?What were we doing?? She said, ?I don?t know, Mom.? It?s a song we?ve sung since she was a baby, so she knows it by heart.?

Just over a year ago, Kathryn was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. That means her pancreas does not produce insulin and that she has to get all of her insulin through shots. The body needs insulin to soak up excess sugar in the blood, which would otherwise be toxic.

Kathryn?s diabetes was discovered in the spring of 2010 after she lost 25 pounds. Suzanne remembers that Kathryn drank a lot of water at that time and was irritable. She took Kathryn to a doctor and learned that Kathryn was very close to needing intensive care.

?Her weight loss was a symptom of her diabetes,? said Suzanne. ?When you don?t have any insulin, you can?t process sugar, and sugar is what keeps you going. She was starving to death. It didn?t matter how much she ate. In fact, the more she ate the more it sucked the energy out of her.?

Now that Kathryn is taking insulin injections, she has the freedom to eat what she wants during mealtime, but must be careful about snacking in between meals. For instance, she can?t eat grapes or bananas between meals because those are too high in natural sugar. Her condition has affected what Suzanne cooks for supper. Suzanne loves noodles, but those are high in carbohydrates, which are not good for Kathryn.

When Kathryn was having a checkup at the University of Iowa Children?s Hospital for her diabetes, the doctors screened her for thyroid cancer. The reason they did that was they have found that diabetics are more likely than the rest of the population to get thyroid cancer. Unfortunately, the doctors found cancerous lumps in Kathryn?s throat.

?It didn?t cause Kathryn any pain but you could feel them with your hand,? said Suzanne.

The cancer in her thyroid moved to the lymph nodes in her throat. To Suzanne?s surprise, Kathryn wanted to have surgery immediately after learning of her cancer.

?We met with the surgeon, and Kathryn said, ?Can we do it tomorrow?? The surgeon laughed and said ?How about next week?? Kathryn said, ?If I have to wait, that?s fine.??

Suzanne believes that Kathryn?s previous medical issues prepared her for dealing with thyroid cancer.

?She was a little bit nervous, but she just wanted it done and over with so she wouldn?t have to worry about it anymore,? said Suzanne. ?I looked her in the eye and said, ?We need to take care of this or you will die.? She said, ?OK. If we need to do it, let?s do it.??

Last November, Kathryn?s lymph nodes and thyroid were removed. One month later, she underwent a radioactive iodine treatment to kill the remaining malignant cells. For two weeks prior to the treatment, Kathryn could not eat anything containing iodine, which includes lactose products. Suzanne said she essentially lived on shredded wheat and apples during that time. Kathryn will undergo another radioactive iodine treatment this winter, after which she will be scanned to see if there are any remaining malignant cells.

?The doctors are happy with the preliminary results, so we?re hopeful they got it all,? said Suzanne.

Kathryn is on vacation this week at a camp in Boone called Camp Hertko Hollow. It is a camp for diabetic children where they learn how to cope with their disorder and at the same time have fun playing with the other kids.

?Kathryn is excited because their pool is up and running this year,? said Suzanne.