Sunday 22 March 2009

Paige got Ovarian Cancer at the age of 9!

This is one brave young lady, having to go through such an awful ordeal at such a young age.
I read her story in todays newspaper and thought i'd share it with you all.




ALL CLEAR: Young survivor Paige hugs mum Kirstie


BRAVE Paige Brown cuddles up to her mum after becoming the youngest girl in Britain to beat ovarian cancer.
She was only NINE when she was diagnosed with the killer disease that normally hits women over FIFTY.
Paige faced a frightening, painful battle for life in which she stopped breathing and went temporarily blind. But she fought through against all the odds—and now at 11 the smiling youngster is living a normal life.
“We’re so proud of her,” says her mum Kirstie, 44. “She runs around now as if she’s never been ill—but we thought we were going to lose her. Her tumour was so big it was impacting on her other organs and her kidneys had partially stopped functioning. It was terrifying.”
Paige’s nightmare started with stomach pains shortly after she had moved home with her mum, dad Graham and sister Georgia, now nine.
“The doctor put them down to the stress of moving and starting a new school,” says Kirstie, a reflexologist.
“But as the weeks went by they grew more frequent. She would be bent double with the pain.”
Then Paige suffered an episode of stomach pain so severe her parents rushed her to Bristol Children’s Hospital. She was sent home, but a fortnight later doctors found she had a 10cm-wide tumour in her stomach. “In those two weeks, the tumour had grown so big on her ovary, they could feel it just by pressing her stomach,” says Kirstie.
“We were devastated when they told us it was ovarian cancer. I had always thought it was a disease older women got—not someone the age of nine. The surgeons found the tumour was too big to remove.”
Paige started gruelling chemotherapy to shrink it—but suffered a severe reaction to the anti-sickness medication she was given.
“She suddenly stopped breathing and lost consciousness,” says Kirstie. “She was rushed to intensive care and had seizures for the next 24 hours. We sat by her bedside praying she would make it.’
Paige did finally regain consiousness —only to discover she had lost her sight. It didn’t come back for 48 hours. “That was so frightening for her,” says Kirstie.
The plucky youngster finished her chemotherapy in June 2007—then had an operation to remove the shrunken tumour.
Her mum says: “She just wouldn’t give up.”
Doctors have now given her the all-clear, although she has to have blood tests every two months.

Kirstie says: “There is a small chance the cancer could come back but so far there is no sign of it returning.
Paige lost one of her ovaries due to the cancer treatment—but she still has one good ovary left and we are very hopeful that she can be a mum one day if that is what she wants.
“Paige is back to her normal self now. She loves riding her pony and going swimming, and she’s really enjoying life.”
A spokeswoman for Cancer Research UK said: “It is extremely rare for ovarian cancer to occur in a girl as young as nine.”
News of the World doctor Hilary Jones added: “Ovarian cancer is diagnosed in nearly 7,000 UK women a year, mainly the over 50s. In ten per cent of cases, usually in younger women, it comes from the egg-making cells in the ovarian tissue.
“Paige has been very unlucky—but there is a good chance she has been cured for ever.”

2 comments:

  1. I never understand why they say: "it normally hits women over FIFTY". When you look at the cross section of people we alone are in touch with, I don't see it. From my view it seems to just attack whoever it likes.

    What a cool little girl! Thanks for the post.

    hope you're doing ok this week?
    x

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  2. I was told I had a 5% chance of having Ovarian Cancer when they were going to remove an Ovarian Cyst. That changed my life at the age of 32 being diagnosed with Stage IIIc. This poor little girl getting diagnosed so young. At least they caught it early. Young women seem to getting it more and more it seems. Thanks for the post!

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