Columbia Falls child loses valiant battle with cancer

Hungry Horse News

Kymber Johnson, an 11-year-old from Columbia Falls who waged a valiant battle with cancer, died Dec. 6.

Johnson attended Glacier Gateway Elementary School and the students and staff are mourning her loss, said principal Penni Anello on Monday.

“She was an amazing kid,” an emotional Anello said. “Oh my goodness.”

Anello said it was a long, hard week at the school after they learned of the child’s death.

“Although Kymber did not beat her cancer, I think we can all say that without a doubt, she gave it the fight of its life and that in the end she was indeed the force to be reckoned with. Kymber’s family would like to thank all of the family, friends, strangers, community and anyone in between for all of their love and support, from donations, to prayers and all of the positive thoughts and sentiments. It gave more strength to them than they can convey and truly is inspiring to know so many people cared,” the family wrote in the child’s obituary.

Johnson and her parents, James and Ashley Johnson, learned she had cancer about two years ago after a series of minor injuries left Kymber’s knee irritated and inflamed to the point of her collapsing after trying to get up from an ice skating fall.

They went through a gauntlet of hardships, as doctors amputated part of her leg after it was discovered she had an aggressive form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma.

She underwent nine months of chemotherapy and a host of painful treatments, including removal of the section of bone affected, which meant removing her whole knee joint. But because of her age, and the location of the cancer, Kymber was a candidate for rotationplasty, a surgical procedure that removes the knee joint and replaces it with that leg’s ankle joint.

Because the main nerve and blood vessels are kept intact, Kymber was able to wiggle the toes of her reattached foot within minutes after the surgery. Not long after, she was doing physical therapy to retrain the muscles and nerves of the foot and hip to work together and to get used to a new prosthetic.

Shortly thereafter, she was declared cancer free.

But a few months later, a tumor was found in her lungs and she eventually succumbed the disease.

“The staff is putting together a quilt of all of our memories of Kymber,” Anello said.

Services will be at a later date.

“The family knows that many will want to celebrate Kymber and be in attendance at her funeral, with that in mind they will be waiting until after the holidays to do a Celebration of Life, as right now they would like to focus on being with family and getting through the holiday season,” the family said in Kymber’s obituary.

Columbia Mortuary is caring for Kymber’s family. Her obituary is here.