'This is tough, but so am I'

fter what Alexandria went through the past 15 months, her father describes her in two words.

“Courageous and inspiring,” Steve Kuehmichel said.

“She was way braver than she ever knew she was. It’s a big thing to accept and do what she did.”

Alexandria, heading into her freshman year at Ozaukee High School, took head-on a bout with Ewing-like sarcoma, a rare cancer that caused her to have a portion of her leg replaced.

She endured chemotherapy, radiation, infections and Covid-19 while staying positive and on track.

“Through all of this one of the biggest things is she never gave up. She always kept trying,” Steve, a single father of two girls, said.

Now, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Alexandria and her father and sister will be making family memories to last a lifetime with the donation of a camper from Camping World in Saukville.

Alexandria’s journey began with discomfort in her leg in spring 2022 that sent her to the doctor. The initial diagnosis was growing pains or Osgood-Schlatter disease, a condition causing a bump and pain in the shin. A trip to an arthroscopic specialist and an MRI followed. Three stress fractures were found, and she was equipped with a walking boot.

After two days in her boot, the bump grew from an eighth of an inch to fist size.

St. Mary’s Ozaukee emergency room immediately sent Alexandria to Children’s Hospital in Wauwatosa.

On April 20, the family was told it was cancer but the type wasn’t known until later. Leg amputation was brought up as a possibility.

That weekend, Alexandria started chemotherapy.

“It was really fast,” her father said. “You have this now. We need to get you in treatment.”

The chemo schedule consisted of two three-day treatments followed by a five-day treatment. The longer version hit Alexandria hard, causing low blood counts, infections and fevers.

On July 5, 2022, she was taken to the ER with a bacterial infection, was put in the intensive care unit and required surgery.

“It was right under my thigh. I couldn’t sit right,” Alexandria said.

“It was kind of a scary thing,” her father said.

Another time, a stomach infection caused Alexandria to throw up every five minutes.

“It was extremely painful watching her,” her father said.

On another occasion, one of Alexandria’s fevers reached 103.7 degrees. An ambulance took Alexandria to Aurora Medical Center in Grafton instead of all the way to Children’s due to a heavy rain storm.

The big surgery came on Aug. 4, five days before her 14th birthday. A 6.5-inch long piece of Alexandria’s leg was replaced with rods, pins and a cadaver bone.

She was up and moving a day later.

“The bravest thing I could have seen from any person. Within less than 24 hours of her surgery she stood up and took three steps crying in pain,” her father said.

Visits were limited due to chemo affecting Alexandria’s immune system.

“On her birthday, I was finally able to see her,” her sister Malayna, a sophomore, said.

From mid-May to August, Alexandria couldn’t put any pressure on her leg.

She moved into grandmother Susan Nemacheck’s living room in Saukville for eight months. Alexandria’s home in Fredonia has steps she wasn’t going to be able to handle.

Chemo continued through the week before Christmas, after which she was hit hard with radiation, when it was discovered the cancer had spread.

Alexandria kept her personality and her love to redecorate.

“Even in her wheelchair she was trying to rearrange furniture,” her father said.

Side effects of the radiation affected how things smelled and tasted. Alexandria got out of the hospital right before Thanksgiving and during dinner “took a couple of bites and burst into tears,” her father said.

The smell of grilled food grossed Alexandria out. The remedies were the smell of peppermint and Jolly Rancher candy.

Alexandria had her last chemo treatment before Christmas and ended up contracting Covid, but her fever never reached hospital-visit level.

Alexandria missed the last two months of school but came back for the last couple of days with restrictions and attended her eighth-grade promotion ceremony.

“I kind of wanted to just say goodbye to them. Nobody actually talked to me about it,” Alexandria said.

For one of her final projects as an eighth-grader, Alexandria created a book that told the story of a frog named Simon who got cancer.  It took a month to write and weeks to edit and do the pictures. The theme, she said, is “This is tough but so am I.”

Students made get-well cards and teachers put together a gift basket.

The disease and treatment have taken its toll on the family. Steve went from more than 60 hours of work per week as receiving coordinator and inventory control specialist at Kleen Test to 25 to 30 hours, making it difficult to pay bills.

Alexandria’s sister Malayna, a sophomore, said they had to re-establish their relationship.

“The thing I think was really hard was me and Alex lost our bond and we had to reconnect when it was over,” she said.

Steve said he took strength from his youngest daughter from the day of the diagnosis.

“I was basically looking at her trying not to break down. Her words were ‘What’s the next step and how do we get rid of it?’

“Seeing how strong she was put me into one style of thinking. I had to accept my daughter has cancer. Everything was going to change. I accepted it for her because she accepted it.”

Alexandria recently had a good  checkup, but the cancer has a 70% chance of returning. Twenty percent of those who experience a return of this cancer survive, Steve said.

Now, Alexandria is trying to have a normal summer. She has been kayaking — her father bought her one and they used it once on Random Lake before her surgery — and plans to go camping.

When the Make-A-Wish Foundation offered to make one of her wishes a reality, she first asked for a trip to Alaska, but later asked for a camper instead. Within three weeks, the family had a camper.

“We wanted to be able to make more memories,” her father said.

The journey has been difficult for the family of three. The girls’ mother isn’t in their lives and owes thousands in child support. The family survived a winter without a furnace a few years ago and was homeless at one point.

But some sense of normalcy has returned after Alexandria’s surgery.

“I still have two teenage girls. That doesn’t change,” Steve said.

To help with medical bills, a gofundme site has been created at https://gofund.me/846ccb85.