After Daughter Dies, Mom Raises $100K on Facebook to Help Others

When Bree and Luke Rowand’s daughter, Kylie, was born, she was six-and-a-half pounds of joy. “From the beginning, Kylie has always been so full of life, so vivacious, independent, free spirit, smart, happy, smiley, a beautiful ray of sunshine,” Bree, 28, of San Diego, Calif., wrote on the Facebook page she created, “Prayers for Kylie, God’s Little Warrior.” Just 19 months later, however, a swollen eye brought the bubbly infant to a doctor’s checkup, where a series of tests found her tiny body to be riddled with cancerous tumors.

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“As the doctors described it, an explosion of tumors went off in her body,” wrote Bree. Sadly, the cancer spread to her bone marrow as well, and on Dec. 30, 2013, Kylie was diagnosed with stage IV neuroblastoma. “On top of Kylie’s cancer,” Bree added, “after three rounds of chemotherapy, she was diagnosed with [the disease-causing hormone] vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP). Kylie is the only child ever seen with VIP in stage IV neuroblastoma.”

Kylie and Bree in the hospital. (Photo: Facebook)

Little Kylie’s treatment lasted for more than a grueling year — which included a seven-hour surgery, a medically induced coma, and many rounds of chemo — until her body could sustain no more, Bree tells Yahoo Parenting. She died in February at just 2 ½ years old. But, wrote Bree, “Kylie won. She fought the good fight never letting it bring her down or take away her smile. She got the ultimate gift, to be cancer free living in heaven. We miss our girl more than words could ever explain, but we get by on knowing she isn’t suffering any longer.”

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Since then, Bree has been channeling that positive attitude through her Facebook community — now with more than 200,000 community members in 47 countries — by helping other families who are dealing with childhood cancer. In the past six months alone, she has raised more than $100,000 to help such families pay for basic expenses, from gas bills to mortgage payments, that can cause huge additional stresses while dealing with a very sick child.

Kylie (Photo: Facebook)

“Childhood cancer was our life and it changed my life, and it’s a part of life that others don’t even know exists,” Bree tells Yahoo Parenting. “Everybody just loves each other and accepts each other in the childhood cancer community. We are all fighting a war, and it’s something I can’t just walk away from. It’s painful, but it gives my life purpose.”

Through the nonprofit Kylie Rowand Foundation she and her husband have founded and by organizing fundraisers, including a yearly spring golf tournament, the bereaved mom helps to raise funds both for struggling families and for childhood cancer research. (A separate fundraising effort, called Kylie’s Kolors and started by a dedicated Facebook follower, sells bright colors of nail polish, which Kylie loved, as a way of raising funds for Bree and Luke, as well as for other struggling parents.)

Bree, pregnant with her second child, and Luke. (Photo: Facebook)

Another vital part of the work Bree does, she says, is to raise awareness.

“We fight for those who have gone on to heaven, those currently fighting, those who survived, and those who unfortunately will be diagnosed today, tomorrow, or any day after that. Please join us in the fight. Consider donating. Or just simply talk about it. Spread awareness,” she wrote in a recent Facebook post. “I’m sorry if I’ve scared you. Please don’t live in fear, just be educated. Know about it.”

“People don’t want to talk about it,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Doctors don’t want to talk about it.” But it’s important for parents to be aware (“not paranoid”), because often they’ll be the ones to know that “something is wrong,” but because a doctor can’t find anything, they’ll be sent home — only to have cancer found too late, after it’s spread.

Baby Lucas, who was 8 days old on Thursday. (Photo: Facebook)

People are listening to Bree — more than she’d ever imagined would be following a Facebook page she says she set up simply so she wouldn’t have to answer the constant influx of emails and texts from friends and family wanting to know the latest with her daughter’s illness. “It was just a snowball effect,” she says of friends sharing the page to request prayers. “I truly believe it was my daughter’s spirit and her strength [that drew so many supporters], and also the bond we had as mother and daughter. Also our faith. We held on strong and that got us through.”

Now they have something else to lighten their spirits: On Dec. 9, Bree writes that they were brought “the bright light that had been missing for 10 months,” through the birth of a second child, Lucas Kyler, who came as a surprise.

“I don’t even know how I got pregnant. It just happened right after she passed away,” Bree says. “I was definitely happy, but I was worried about if I’d be able to see him as him and not as Kylie. I was worried I would cry whenever I looked at him. But he’s had the opposite effect. He’s made me feel like he was a gift to me from Kylie.”

(Top photo montage: Facebook)

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