Vivienne
"I Trusted Them with Her Life"
When Sarah Salvatoriello brought her 2-year-old daughter, Vivienne, to the Emergency Room at Salah Foundation Children’s Hospital at Broward Health, she didn’t expect to learn that her daughter had cancer.
“She had been getting fevers and within a week her walking changed dramatically and regressed, from her holding on to furniture to then crawling,” Salvatoriello said.
The family met with the hematology and oncology teams led by medical director Hector Rodriguez-Cortes, M.D. “As part of our family-centered approach, our team of doctors, nurses, social workers and Child Life specialists sat down with the parents to prepare them for this life-changing news and what the plan would be for Vivienne,” Rodriguez-Cortes said.
Little Vivienne was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“We were told that the staff was going to be there to support us as a family and would be there for the entire journey,” Vivienne’s mother said.
Over the next two and half years, the family lived at the hospital while Vivienne underwent chemotherapy and other treatments to fight the cancer.
Today, she’s an energetic 6-year-old who has been in remission since 2017.
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