Kelsey Cabralis, 12, is back home af­ter re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for her Acute Lym­phoblas­tic Leukaemia (ALL) at Apol­lo Hos­pi­tals Del­hi, In­dia, and all signs point to her putting the dis­ease be­hind her for good. Kelsey and her fam­i­ly are full of praise for those who do­nat­ed to help her re­ceive the life-sav­ing treat­ment.

The fam­i­ly has since stopped ac­cept­ing do­na­tions.

Cabralis was di­ag­nosed with the ag­gres­sive and life-threat­en­ing form of blood can­cer at just two and was fight­ing her third bout of the con­di­tion when she left for treat­ment in April 2022.

“Fi­nan­cial­ly, the Lord pro­vid­ed and we thank God for every­one who con­tributed,” her great aunt Ir­ma Sookoo said.

She said the fam­i­ly re­ceived a wealth of as­sis­tance from the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, cor­po­rate T&T, pri­vate cit­i­zens and AS Bry­den and Sons where Kelsey’s moth­er works.

Her moth­er, Can­dice Moral­do said Kelsey un­der­went dif­fer­ent types of chemother­a­py and re­ceived a bone mar­row trans­plant from her younger sis­ter, Kian­na Cabralis, 7, who was a per­fect match.

“All her tests com­ing back neg­a­tive, she’s in re­mis­sion...her (sis­ter’s) mar­row is work­ing per­fect­ly in her,” Moral­do said.

Kian­na said it felt “good” be­ing able to do­nate her bone mar­row to help her old­er sis­ter, but said she is still re­cov­er­ing from the pro­ce­dure.

When Kelsey re­turned home on Oc­to­ber 9, her aunt said she still has some tests to be done.

“We just have some post med­ical fol­lowups that have to be done with Kelsey be­cause we have to do tests pri­vate­ly here and then the re­sults will be sent abroad, to In­dia to her doc­tor,” Sookoo said.

Hav­ing over­come the fi­nan­cial and med­ical hur­dles in Kelsey’s life, her fam­i­ly is now try­ing to sal­vage what they can of her ed­u­ca­tion.

Her grand­moth­er Sher­ma Moral­do said Kelsey, who bat­tled the dis­ease for sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­ods of her life, lost a lot of time in the class­room.

Her most re­cent ab­sence, she said, had them fear­ful.

“Kelsey at­tends Tu­na­puna Girls’ RC right, but be­cause of this whole sit­u­a­tion, she is sup­posed to be in Stan­dard 4, even at the point where she orig­i­nal­ly got the sec­ond re­lapse. So we are now in mid-Oc­to­ber so she has lost a whole month of school or more,” she said.

She said they will now have to write to the school’s prin­ci­pal to ap­peal for Kelsey to be de­ferred from writ­ing the SEA ex­am un­til 2024.

“Kelsey is re­al­ly, at a loss right now even though all her books are here, every­thing is in place for her to at­tend but at this point she can’t,” Moral­do said.