JUPITER, Fla. — Jaime Kippenberger barely looks up as WPTV talks to her about her cancer journey, because she's intent on a project.
"I'm having so much trouble with this yarn," Jaime said.
She was crocheting a Taylor Swift doll inside her art studio in her home as we spoke with her. But you don't have to look Jaime in the eye to realize her struggle. You can feel it through her words.
"It was kind of overwhelming. And I went blank a little bit," Jaime said.
Jaime's mother, Carla, was the first to notice something was off with her then 16-year-old daughter.
"Jaime started saying, oh, I have to go to the bathroom, or I'm always cold," Carla said.
Carla pushed for months to see a doctor that would take her mom-gut seriously.
"A couple of tests ended up being an all-day event where she probably drew 30 vials of blood," Carla said.
"Eventually, she had a large scan of the brain that showed a large tumor in the pituitary area," said Dr. Ziad Khatib, the director of the neuro-oncology program at Nicklaus Children's Hospital. "It's the part of the brain that produces all the important hormones for our body."
Dr. Khatib showed WPTV a tumor the size of a ping-pong ball on Jaime's scans and further explained why the location of the tumor impacted Jaime's development.
"It was kind of one diagnosis after the next and the next," Jaime said. She's referencing other health issues she experienced, like a disorder with a gland other than the pituitary that made it difficult for Jaime to mentally process the weight of a cancer diagnosis. "Through it, I was like oh that sucks. It was not a real reaction. I was mostly numb during that time."
"My treatment was four rounds of chemotherapy," Jaime said. "Then, I had 24 rounds of proton radiation every single day, excluding weekends, for the entire month of June."
For about a year, Jaime bounced from her home to the hospital for treatment while trying to keep up with school work. Jaime's mother was by her side every step of the way and working remote. She had to keep her job to keep up with medical bills.
"If there's only one word, insanity," Jaime's mother, Carla, said to describe this chapter of their lives. Jaime went through treatment partly during COVID when social distancing and masks were still mandatory at hospitals. She also experienced an allergic reaction to one of her treatments, so she had to be heavily sedated at time to push through.
Jaime said the chaotic nature of this chapter of her life made losing her hair during treatment seem not so bad.
"The only way I knew how to live that part of my life was to go through treatment," Jaime said.
"July second was my last radiation treatment and since then, I have been in remission," Jaime said about being three years cancer-free. "Nothing is 100%, so I'm just relieved and on year three, everything is still looking good."
WPTV partnered with the Chasin A Dream Foundation to surprise Jaime with two tickets to the Taylor Swift concert in Miami. Jaime is a huge Taylor Swift fan and said she's still trying to process this mega surprise, but she knows two things: she's taking her mom as her plus-one and planning to wear a sparkly outfit!
Jupiter
