May 09
24
Ten Year Old Has Breast Cancer
When I read or see stories about kids who have cancer one thing always rings in my head. How is this fair? Are kids really equipped with the faculties to deal with such a blow to the body, and to the mind not to mention? But then it inevitably is almost always true that children tend to face serious disease with more courage than most adults it seems! I’m not sure if it’s just they are still naive and don’t know the full impact this disease could have on their life or that their life itself may be in danger, but every time I read about kids who get cancer they always seem to be old souls, looking at their disease in an objective way and telling the adults around them who are freaking out that they’ll be ok, really.
Talk about heart wrenching, children with serious and incurable disease is extremely heart breaking, but they really seem like they handle it like they are enlightened little beings, which is always amazing to me. I read a story recently about how a young girl, at just the age of ten, has been diagnosed with breast cancer. All the breast cancer research indicates that she is in the extreme minority demographic for getting this disease, since less than .1 are in her age group that get breast cancer, so it really is quite an anomaly for someone this young to get it, even more so than for someone in their teens or early twenties.
The young California girls has been diagnosed with invasive ductal stage II breast cancer, which is only usually known as a cancer that adults get because of the fact that it is spurred on by estrogen in the body, and young girls her age shouldn’t have high levels of this hormone yet, before they have even hit puberty. However, the girl’s chances of complete recovery are pretty high. She is going to get a full mastectomy of the affected breast, and has about an 85% chance of full recovery for the next several years living cancer free.
Nevertheless, this is quit an unusual story, and one that unfortunately happened to a young child and has put her life on indefinite hold for treatment instead of living the carefree life of a child that she should be. Doctors think that the reason she got it at such a young age is a genetic predisposition to the cancer.
