At the age of four, her daughter’s life was forever altered by a cancer diagnosis. We can be reminded of our mortality, but seeing a child face a cancer diagnosis can be perplexing.
Children will be haunted by the realization of their mortality for the rest of their lives.Bullies can exacerbate the situation, as one mother knows from her child’s experience with bone cancer prior to starting school.
A little girl was only four years old when she got a diagnosis of Ewing’s Sarcoma.
The child had never been to school or rode a bicycle and spent her time in a tutu.
This little girl would spend the next year experiencing more suffering and pain than most ever see in their lifetimes.
The little girl would begin going to funerals of people she loved that had died from the same form of cancer she was fighting against.
The four-year-old would face losing her hair, most of her muscle mass and her innocence.
The tumor was touching the spine between two ribs in the middle of the back.
The location made operations to remove the tumor difficult.
The next year saw the four year old undergoing brutal treatments.
The next year included seventeen chemotherapy treatments, and multiple surgeries.
Part of the spine sheath and four ribs were removed.
A spinal fusion was also among the surgeries.
The little girl entered remission and her mother took a scar covered, pale, and bald five-year old home.
The little girl went to school where she encountered bullies.
By the time she was eight years old she was healthy and appeared to have recovered from the tumor completely.
The little girl was on the honor roll, dancing competitively and out going with her new health and recovered beauty.
The child was moving forward courageously.
One day the girl’s mother gave her a tank top and shorts that she loved to wear.
The little girl asked for something else, her mother was confused.
It was then that she told her mother that a boy at camp had told her that she didn’t need to show her scars because they looked scary.
Her mom told her she could serve as an inspiration to others so the young girl put them on and went to show the camp bully that he could not get to her.
