911 dispatchers rally around 4-year-old Rigby boy after brain tumor diagnosis

RIGBY — A group of 911 dispatchers is supporting a young boy from Rigby and his family after he was recently diagnosed with cancer.

His name is Stetson Poole, and his mother, MeKenna Poole, is a Jefferson County 911 dispatcher. She has been working as a dispatcher for 18 years, with 15 of those in Salt Lake City and three in Jefferson County.

MeKenna says she has always enjoyed the work.

“I’ve loved being able to help people in that way, in their worst moments,” she said. “I’m there to walk them through it and to help them get the help that they need.”

The GoFundMe

Now, her fellow Jefferson County dispatchers are stepping up to help her. Dispatcher Azlynn Hernandez talks highly of MeKenna.

“She is a very kind person, very thoughtful. She puts her everything into what she does and includes everyone. She is always someone that you can rely on, even if she is going through something tough. She’s always there for you,” Hernandez said.

That’s why Hernandez created a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the costs of Stetson’s cancer treatments. Doctors recently found a tumor about the size of an egg in the 4-year-old’s brain stem.

“When we found out what was going on with Stetson and the Poole family, myself and a fellow dispatcher decided that we needed to help out,” Hernandez said. “We just thought that would be beneficial to try and help them in any kind of way. MeKenna does so much for us; we wanted to be there as much as we could.”

Hernandez has met Stetson and said he is the cutest and funniest little boy.

“He’s very intelligent, he’s the sweetest thing. He’s just a great little guy all around,” she said.

What happened

On April 22, MeKenna took Stetson into the emergency room at Idaho Falls Community Hospital because he was not feeling well and acted lethargic. She had taken him to the doctors the previous day because he had a bad cough and was having a hard time breathing.

While at the emergency room, tests showed he had parainfluenza, which is a common virus that causes upper and lower respiratory infections. But then MeKenna and her husband, Shawn, received devastating news.

“They decided to do a CT scan and found out that he had a brain tumor,” she said. “I was pretty much in shock. I couldn’t believe it.”

MeKenna said she had known something was wrong for over a year, but no one could give her the right answer as to what was going on.

For example, Stetson has had bad headaches. He also began throwing up when he woke up in the mornings and was put on medication to help stop it. He lost balance on uneven ground and would need help walking, holding onto someone’s hand. He was eventually put in physical therapy to try to help. He then got a lazy eye and was given glasses from an eye doctor.

But the brain tumor finally made more sense.

“We found out that the brain tumor was pressing up against the brain stem, and the brain stem controls your balance. It controls the throwing up. That is also part of the brain stem that controls things like your eye movements. So, the tumor was causing all of these issues that we’ve been trying to help,” MeKenna told EastIdahoNews.com.

Stetson was taken to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City and had surgery to remove the tumor on April 27.

He was diagnosed with ependymoma. According to John Hopkins Medicine, it’s a rare type of tumor that develops in the brain or spinal cord. Symptoms in the brain include things like headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures and vision changes.

MeKenna said it has been hard to watch her son go through all of this, especially since he is typically a very easygoing kid.

“He’s very funny, normally. Just the pain that he’s in … he just screams. He’s never ever done that before. It’s a totally different kid than his normal,” she said.

What’s next

Stetson is back home now but will start radiation next week in Utah. It will be a long process, lasting Monday through Friday for the next seven weeks.

“Because he’s so little, he has to be put to sleep every single day while they do the radiation. He will have to fast every day and then be put to sleep for it,” MeKenna explained.

In the future, he’ll need follow-up CT scans every three months for the next two years.

“Then after that, we’ll do them every six months for about two years,” MeKenna said. “Then it will just go up to like nine months for two years, and then pretty much he’ll have to have one every single year for the rest of his life to make sure that it doesn’t come back.”

As for the GoFundMe campaign, MeKenna said she is very grateful to her coworkers and for the help and donations. She said she was “blown away” when they proposed creating one for her family.

There’s a $7,500 goal. As of Friday morning, over $5,600 had been raised. Hernandez hopes that by creating the GoFundMe, they can raise money for travel expenses and medical costs for the Poole family.

“I hate to see Stetson going through all of this. He’s been really strong through all of this, and we are just praying that he makes it out and makes a full recovery,” Hernandez said.