It turned out that doctors repeatedly misinterpreted the child’s analyzes. In the meantime, cancer has entered the fourth stage.
Little Ellie was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma when she was only 11 months old. Neuroblastoma is a type of cancer that attacks the autonomic nervous system. It is characteristic precisely for early childhood.
“I was absolutely devastated. After all, Ellie is still so tiny, and she already has to fight for her life, ”says Andrea, the girl’s mother.
Ellie had nerve cells in her neck. After all the tests, the doctors assured the baby’s mother that the chances of a complete cure are quite high. Underwent surgery, Ellie underwent the necessary therapy. And three months later, they solemnly announced that the baby was absolutely healthy.
Three months later, the mother brought her daughter for a routine examination – since the girl was at risk, she now will have to always be supervised. On the MRI it turned out that there are some strange spots in the spine. But the doctors assured the alarmed mother that they were just hemangiomas – benign formations, accumulations of blood cells.
“I was assured on oath that it was not neuroblastoma,” Andrea recalls.
Well, doctors know better. Since Ellie is doing well, there is no reason not to rejoice. But “hemangiomas” did not dissolve over the years. In the end, to calm her mom, who was getting a little panicked, Ellie underwent a series of tests. It turned out that for three years the results of the MRI were interpreted incorrectly. Ellie had cancer that had spread throughout her body and had already entered the fourth, critical stage. The girl at that time was four years old.
“The tumors were on the spine, in the head, in the thigh. If the first time the doctors gave a 95 percent guarantee that Ellie will recover, now the predictions were very cautious, ”Andrea told the Daily Mail.
The girl required six chemotherapy sessions at a Minnesota hospital. Then she was transferred to the cancer center in New York. There she underwent proton and immunotherapy, became a participant in a clinical program, during which they are testing a vaccine against neuroblastoma, which, scientists hope, will help prevent relapse. Now Ellie does not have cancer, but she is still under the supervision of doctors to make sure that the girl is not in danger.
“Listen to your heart, rely on your intuition,” Andrea advises all parents. – If I obeyed the doctors in everything, did not doubt their words, who knows how it would have ended. You always need a second opinion if you are in doubt about the diagnosis. “