Before diagnosis, Trinity was a vibrant, independent 5 year old with a zest for life that is rare to see. She loved playing soccer, cooking in the kitchen with mom, exploring the outdoors and taking advantage of every day. She wants to grow up and be a professional soccer player! Everyone who meets Trinity describes her as the kindest, most loving and empathetic child. About a year ago, Trinity began having symptoms that made me take her into the doctor several times, especially the increase in nose bleeds. The doctor reassured us that it was behavioral or environmental, so we did what we could to keep the atmosphere less dry and changed our bedtimes routines. Then in June of this year, Trinity began complaining of a leg pain. There was no obvious injury, so I took her into urgent care, where X-rays showed nothing and so we were referred to Orthopedics. Orthopedics took some more images, but again didn’t find anything so we were referred out for an MRI. By June 16, 2025 the pain was unmanageable and she couldn’t even walk, so off to the emergency room we went! They gave her an MRI and I remember coming back to the room after the imaging was done. We weren’t even back for more than 5 minutes when the ER doctor came in and pulled up a chair and my world got very small in that moment. She said the words to me that will forever be etched in my mind, “I just want to prepare you because Oncology is coming down to speak with you because they found a mass in the MRI”. It was an absolute whirlwind after that. We weren’t even transported up to the HOT unit and I remember thinking to myself “We won’t be here long, I don’t need this information”. Our initial inpatient lasted 24 days. We received her exact diagnosis 3 days later. Stage 3 intermediate risk rhabdomyosarcoma of the pelvis with a tumor that was not resectable. Her pain was unmanageable and I remember having an IV pole stacked 4 wide with two levels. An emergency PICC line was placed to initiate emergency chemo. She also needed a nephrostomy tube placed due to the tumor completely occluding her right kidney. She immediately lost all of her hair. She wouldn’t eat , so a NG tube was placed. She was so confused and on so much medication that my sweet little girl became someone I didn’t even recognize. She became so aggressive from the combination of pain medication that she actually flipped her PICC line and had to move up getting her port placement. Her initial chemo treatment was so aggressive that her body had a poor response and she ended up on oxygen support and just about every antibiotic you could think of due to febrile neutropenia of unknown origin. Turns out she just needed a blood transfusion. Meanwhile, she threw up three NG tubes and we were graduated to an NJ tube. We finally got stable enough to go home and managed to almost make it a month before we were back in the hospital with 2 hospital grade infections. During this time, they were giving her an IV antibiotic that she had a severe reaction to that caused her kidneys to shut down and she was unable to metabolize her pain medication and had to receive 2 doses of Narcan to come out of it. She received quite a bit of imaging during this stay and it was noted that her tumor had shrunk enough that it no longer occluded her right kidney, so we did a clamp trial that she completely aced and we were able to get rid of the neph tube! She also managed to throw up her THIRD NJ tube, and we decided to give oral foods a go since she had been eating a significant amount by mouth. After 2 weeks, we finally went home! We were home for almost 2 weeks this time when the effects from her VAC landed us back in the hospital. This time she almost went to PICU for respiratory distress. At this time she had also lost almost 20 pounds in the course of 2 months. I advocated hard for her because she was so proud of not having a “nose tubie” and I knew there had to be malabsorption because she was EATING! More test were ran and TPN was given to boost her back up since she was so far behind… and it worked! She started gaining weight and we got to go home tube free! We have been home since then and she has gained over ten pounds. She is set to start 4 weeks of radiation on a few weeks and her tumor has officially gone from 6.6x 7.7cm to 2.9x2.5cm within 8 weeks of treatment! We still have 31 weeks of chemo to go and 6 months of maintenance after that but I have never been more proud to call her my daughter. She has taken all of this on the chin and has worked to adapt as much a she can. She is still loving, still singing, still dancing and on her good days, she’s moving and grooving using her walker. We don’t know where this road will lead us, but in her own words “WE ARE GONNA KICK CANCER’S BUTT!”