ARLINGTON, S.D. (KELO) —Being sick is never an easy thing, but one little girl who spent a year in the hospital is doing what she can to lift other children’s spirits.
7-year-old Belleamy Sikkink is the second oldest of five children in her family.
“I like to call her my silly goose,” Belleamy’s dad, Trevor Sikkink said.
“She’s a very spunky, very intelligent little girl. She is very strong-minded. If she’s going to do something, she will do it. And she’s shown us that many times, and especially in the last, like, year and a half,” Belleamy’s mom, Bre Sikkink said.
In 2023, Belleamy’s mom Bre noticed some bruising on her daughter. After getting bloodwork done, they found out she had a platelet count of 15,000, which is a very low number.
“We immediately took her to Sanford Children’s, and then from there got a pre-diagnosis of aplastic anemia, which is, really severe form of anemia that requires a bone marrow transplant because it causes bone marrow failure,” Bre said.
“I didn’t really know how to process it. I just knew that, right away, we were not going to give up until she was better,” Trevor said.
For the past year and a half, Belleamy has been in and out of the hospital, spending a lot of time in Minnesota.
“They were able to fly her to Minneapolis, and continued her care there, where she had to get stronger, essentially to be able to go through bone marrow transplant because it, requires so much for your body, wiping out your immune system with chemotherapy, and then getting the new transplant with the new bone marrow itself is sure, and a very hard thing to accept someone else’s into your own body,” Bre said.
While she is home now, she still makes weekly trips to Sanford, and is working on getting better.
“She’s kind of focusing on healing her kidneys more. She has graft versus host disease from the transplant, which is a possible thing that can happen. So she’s been dealing with that, for the last, like, eight months-ish,” Bre said.
One thing that got Belleamy through her hospital stays– was crafting.
“She was in one of her lowest points, she was still crafting and making bracelets and stuff, and she worked through the chemo, radiation and then all of her infusions and she did crafting the whole way through,” Trevor said.
“She made, like, 300 bracelets for all the guests at the wedding. So she kept really busy with that,” Bre said.
Since Belleamy understands what it is like to be in the hospital, she wanted to put together kits that other families can buy to keep their kids busy if they are going through a similar situation.
“Bellamy played with so much play-dough while she was there, so we thought it would be really cool to make play-dough kits, and be able to give back to kids like her,” Bre said.
Along with each kit, comes a special handwritten note from Belleamy, encouraging them to not give up.
“It all comes from her crafting abilities and her caring little heart. She wants kids in the hospital that are just like her to be able to keep busy and do something to keep them busy and give them a little motivation to, you know, never give up,” Trevor said.
And that message extends to all children struggling with an illness.
“And that’s what she hopes is that she can motivate and inspire young kids to do the same thing she did,” Trevor said.
Click here to see the play-dough kits.
