By Lily Abromeit

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When Madelynn Higbee looks back on being Kid Captain, she’ll remember more than just her own experience — she’ll remember all the other captains, too.

She’ll think about meeting the 12 others on Kids Day at Kinnick and hanging out with them during the Homecoming game.

“I felt at home with the others,” the 12-year-old said.

Madelynn is the Kid Captain for the Iowa-Illinois game this Saturday. Kid Captain is a program through the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital that recognizes children who have been through care at the hospital.

In the summer of 2014, Madelynn started feeling swelling and pressure in her neck and throat. She was originally diagnosed with tonsillitis but her parents, Emily and Brian Higbee, knew something worse was wrong. They went to an ear, nose, and throat specialist and were sent right away to the UI Children’s Hospital.

There, they found that she had two large non-cancerous masses in her esophagus. The Macrocysts, as they were called, made it hard for Madelynn to breath.

Usually, this condition can be detected before birth.

“It happens by the age of 2, so the fact that she was 10 was [unexpected],” her mother said.

Thankfully, Brian Higbee added, they were in the right place to get the right treatment — a drug developed in Japan that’s called OK-432.

“Iowa City is the hub for [this] drug,” he said, later adding he thinks the UI has been working with this drug for around 20 years.

Madelynn was in the hospital for 15 days and ended up needed a trach to breathe while the drug took the fluid out of the masses in her esophagus.

“It was a beautiful tool … to make sure she was still breathing while the medicine was working,” Emily Higbee said.

Usually, this drug is administered numerous times but she only needed one round.

“We were told … it would pretty much be a home run if it only needed one round,” her father said.

Now, Madelynn, from Monmouth, Illinois, is back to her normal self. She’s currently working on knitting scarves and potholders.

She said she was surprised when she found out she was a Kid Captain because it had been a while since she had been in the hospital.

“I didn’t really believe it at first,” she said.

Her dad is the one who nominated her because he thought it was a great program.

“I knew it was the least I could do to acknowledge and honor all that Madelynn has been through,” he said.

“Other than being awesome, she is just strong,” Emily Higbee said.

During her stay, Madelynn made a Beads of Bravery necklace. For every MRI, CAT scan, and more that she went through, she was be given a new bead to add.

“Her necklace — her beads of bravery necklace — is very full,” her mother said. “With that comes lots of bravery — exactly what the necklace says.”

As a family, they used the symbol of hoops to make it through.

“You just keep jumping through the hoops and jumping through the hoops and whatever you need to do, just do it. And you don’t know when the end is going to come, when you’re going to have your end in sight but … you just keep positively jumping through the hoops,” Emily Higbee said.