Las Vegas- April 27, 2009–What do you say to your child when you find out she has Breast Cancer? What words do you use to tell your daughter that she is possibly the youngest person ever to be diagnosed with Breast Cancer? Hannah, aged 10, lives in Southern California with her mother Carrie, her father Jeremy and little brother JJ. Just a couple of weeks ago she was unfortunately diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, Stage IIA Triple Negative Breast Cancer. She is presently going to Children Hospital in Los Angeles, although they are not equipped to treat breast cancer in a child. After numerous emails, to many people, we were contacted by Lillie Shockney from Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center, we were able to connect the family with Johns Hopkins and they are looking into treating Hannah. Please help Fight Pink in supporting this beautiful young woman, daughter, big sister, niece and beloved shining spirit in her struggle to fight this disease. Below are a few entries from the website that was put up by the family.

First Doctors Visit

On Monday 4/20, Hannah will be going to her first Oncologist visit at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. We are planning to be there most of the day as we are going to map out a plan of attack. We hope to have a lot of our questions answered. From what we understand there has never been a case reported in a child this young, so it will be a learning experience for both us and the doctors. As new information develops, we will update the site. We cannot express how grateful we are for everybody’s support through this difficult time. Thank you and God bless!

News of first doctors visit

So, as you all know Hannah had her first doctor’s visit today. We probably have more questions now than yesterday. What we do know however is that the Oncologist / Surgeon is suggesting that Hannah have a mastectomy of the affected breast. The issue at hand is how to treat her as she is a child with an adult disease and the hospitals that deal with breast cancer does not typically treat children, and the Children’s hospital does not have the facilities to treat breast cancer. We have two options at this point; (A) Hannah goes to a breast center that does not have the experience in children or (B) she goes to a hospital that has more pediatric care but not so much in the breast cancer area. We will be meeting with a couple of surgeons in the next few days to figure out a game plan. We still do not have a prognosis at this point, nor do we know what type(s) of follow up treatment Hannah will receive. This is a lot for us to digest so as more information arises, we will update the site.

Once again, thank you for all of your love and support. It really makes things bearable in this difficult time.

Update on Hannah

Hannah is doing great and in good spirits. Just want to bring everybody up to speed. We were supposed to meet with a surgeon this week sometime but there were issues with insurance but that has been ironed out, we are just waiting for the call. We also are having new specimen samples sent to pathology at UCLA, just so another set of eyes look at it and we are 200% sure of diagnosis. One of the doctors told us that six other pathologists had already looked at her slides and came to the same conclusion but they were happy to send out new samples (we just want a clear conscience). We will update when we get the results back from that. We are also going to be setting up an appointment with a breast doctor for a second opinion very soon. This is one of (if not the) biggest decisions we will have to make. There have been a ton of phone calls made and endless hours of internet searching on treatment. We will as always keep you all updated as news develops.

Hannah’s Big Day

None of us would have expected to see what we saw on Saturday. When we walked up to the field we noticed that there were pink ribbons and pink balloons everywhere. The team started warming up an hour before the game as usual. Then about ten minutes before the game started, both teams and coaches came out and met at the plate. The manager from the opposing team presented Hannah with a jersey signed by the entire team with words of encouragement and really slick pair of pink Oakley sunglasses. All of the girls held hands and a girl from the other team led in a prayer. After that every girl got in line and gave Hannah a big hug (I don’t think there was a dry eye in the joint).

Now for the game… Hannah threw out the first official pitch, for those of you who don’t know, Hannah has never pitched before. She did a great job though, got the ball to the catcher without hitting the ground or the batter. After that she was off to third base.

Hannah at the plate… Hannah smacked a double to right field her first at bat and hit a single to drive in the go ahead run her second at bat. We were all afraid her nerves would get to her and she would strike out. But she was as cool as a cucumber! All of the girls did great and Silver and Black went on to win 4-2, GREAT JOB GIRLS!!

Please visit Hannah’s  website.

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