Miranda Pederson/Daily News Kayli Upton's family Stephen Payne (from left), Jackson Payne, 4, and mom Nicole Payne on Thursday at their Bowling Green home.

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Just a year ago, 7-year-old Kayli Upton came in from riding her bike with a large goose-egg bump poking from her neck.

But it wasn’t an accident from her sparkly pink bike that caused the bump. And it wasn’t a lymph node infection, as doctors originally thought when they dosed her with antibiotics.

It was leukemia.

In August, Kayli was in remission. Doctors thought the bone marrow transplant she had undergone had been successful.

But in April, the Briarwood Elementary School student came home from Disney World with a fever. And after coming home from the hospital to find out she had relapsed, she discovered her home had been broken into, all of her games and Disney toys stolen.

Her mother, Nicole Payne, said whoever broke into their apartment while they were at the hospital even dumped out their still-packed suitcases to transport Kayli’s Wii and Nintendo DS, among other valuables.

So while Kayli was taken back to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., to fight the leukemia, her fellow students at Briarwood began fighting for her too.

During the last week of school, the students raised thousands of dollars with a lemonade stand and by selling popsicles during their field day. Kayli’s classmates even built her a cardboard dollhouse, complete with paper dolls.

Payne said Kayli was allowed to come home for her birthday weekend in May, and opened the door to an unexpected surprise.

“The school had replaced everything,” she said. “There was a Wii on the table and at least 30 Webkins all over the couch and TV. She was so happy. Her eyes lit up, she was so happy. She cried - and I cried - to have all her stuff back.”

During a phone interview, Kayli sat in her bed at St. Jude as her bandages were changed and said how much she has enjoyed playing with the babies and games with the other children at the hospital.

Payne said her daughter makes friends everywhere she goes, but that she misses her friends back home.

The family is currently staying in a long-term Target House at the hospital while they wait for a marrow match so Kayli can undergo another transplant. On Wednesday, the mother sat in a seemingly abandoned apartment she had not been in for more than a month.

“Not being able to be around everybody is the hardest part,” Payne said of the four-hour drive back to Bowling Green. “But you’d never know Kayli was sick. Besides the lack of hair, you’d not even know she was sick. She’s still outgoing and sassy. She acts like she’s about 16. She just told me she wants a cell phone that takes pictures. So I got her one and got some minutes on it, and I’m taking it down to her today.”

Payne said Kayli will have to repeat the first grade next year, but the family has learned to focus on one day at a time and not worry about the future.

“What she has to go through, it doesn’t seem right, it doesn’t seem fair,” Payne said. “All the medicines she has to take ... it’s the simple things she doesn’t get to do that bothers me. She doesn’t notice, but I do. You really learn what’s important. Some things are just not as important anymore.”

Kayli spent part of the week in isolation after a round of chemotherapy, expected to cut the leukemia presence in her blood in half, didn’t work. The number actually doubled.

“Our whole attitude is that she’s going to get through this, and there is no other option. We’re not going to accept it any other way,” Payne said. “We get through this one day at a time. We concentrate on getting through this day and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. One thing we’ve learned is that you can’t plan anything, things change all the time.”

Payne said Kayli’s classmates wrote her a comic book, in which the tiny blue-eyed girl is a superhero who saves Wal-Mart. Each classmate wrote a page in the continuing story and helped color the pages.

“She loves it, I read it to her all the time,” Payne said. “It makes her smile.”

Kayli has regular doses of chemotherapy that are injected by fluid through her spine. And despite sometimes feeling drowsy, Payne said Kayli will usually wake up, eat, maybe take a nap - and then get back out playing.

She said the Bowling Green community and staff at St. Jude have helped the family stay optimistic, “because when they are so confident, it’s hard for you not to be.”

“I don’t worry and I don’t think about the worst ... until they tell me there is nothing else we can do,” she said. “And we’ll keep fighting this thing.”

— The faculty at Briarwood Elementary School have set up a bank account for donations to the family. Contributions can be made at any BB&T Bank under the name of Kayli Upton.