Kylie Simonds from Connecticut in the US is only eleven years old and has already overcome cancer and become an inventor to help other children just like her.
Around three years ago, Kylie had a kind of cancer of the connective tissue called rhabdomyosarcoma. She spent 46 weeks having chemotherapy, radiation and many surgeries, before finally being given a clean bill of health and has remained as such so far since.
“It was hard to walk around,” she remembered, “and I always had to have someone push [my IV] for me because I was kind of weak when I was in chemo.”
So when Kylie and her class were given a school assignment to design something that would be useful for everyday life, she used her personal experiences of cancer to come up with a brilliant tool for children battling debilitating conditions: the IV Pediatric Backpack 4 Kids with Cancer.
In the original design, a small metal pole stabilises an IV drip bag that is protected from compression or puncture with a cage, and altogether eliminating the big pole on wheels that Kylie found so big and cumbersome.
Though the backpack could help a lot of children with a whole range of conditions, Kylie said she had two friends she made in the hospital, Brooke and Marik, in mind when coming up with the concept of the backpack.
“Marik, he had a prosthetic leg and he has crutches and he always has someone push [the IV] for him,” she explained. “But if he had something like [the backpack] he could just slip it on. [And Brooke] had to sometimes go home with it and she had to stay overnight in the hospital so I think she would have really liked something like this.”
The backpack has already earned Kylie the Patent Award at the Connecticut Invention Convention, which means that it has been sent to the US Patent and Trademark Office, “patent pending”.
“I think it is a wonderful idea,” said Dr Birte Wistinghausen, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology clinical director at Mount Sinai Hospital. “The stigma would fall away from seeing an IV pole.” She added that cancer patients would be allowed more freedom of movement with the backpack, making it a very useful item.
Kylie is now trying to raise enough money on crowdsourcing website CrowdRise to have the backpack manufactured. If you would like to help this inspirational little girl help other children, you can donate here. And if you would like to learn more about Kylie and her journey through cancer, and beyond, then you can visit her website or check out her Facebook page .
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