Miracle Moment: Kinsley Vitiello

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Miracle Moment: Kinsley Vitiello

Three-year-old Kinsley Vitiello loves to play dolls and dance her heart out with her big sister Aubrey.

On Kinsley’s third birthday, when the sisters took Kinsley’s present, a motorized toy car, out for a spin, they turned too fast and tumbled.

“She was looking to the side, and my mom saw that her eye was a little cloudy,” said Aubrey, Kinsey’s sister.

Kinsey’s mom, Taylor Vitiello, is an ER nurse.

“I caught like a glimpse of something in her eye that I hadn’t noticed before, almost like a cat’s eye, you know? That kind of glare is what I saw,” said Vitiello.

An opthalmologist at Golisano Children’s Hospital immediately diagnosed Kinsley with retinoblastoma cancer.

“Before her third birthday, she never even had Tylenol, so we went from this perfectly healthy, happy baby to now,” said Vitiello. “It’s just a whole new world.”

Retinoblastoma is an extremely rare malignant tumor that forms in the retina, which lines the very back of the eye.

Only about 200 – 300 children are diagnosed each year in the U.S.

Kinsley’s is grade E, the worst grade you can get.

“If one little cell got to her optic nerve, that could have gone to her brain and could have spread,” said Vitiello.

Kinlsey goes to Bascom Palmer’s Eye Institute in Miami twice a month for specialized treatment.

“She gets a treatment called intraarterial chemotherapy,” said Vitiello. “They go in through the main artery in her leg and kind of guide a little wire all the way up through her belly or heart. And they actually get it to the back of her eye and disperse the chemo directly into the back of the artery in her eye.”

An intimidating procedure but one that’s working well.

The first treatment killed 70% of the cancer. Kinsley just completed round five.

A whirlwind that started with two sisters and a need for speed.

“As much as I wish that day would have not happened. I’m so grateful,” said Vitiello.

A fall that changed everything. It was a miracle. Kinsey is our miracle moment.

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