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a plea for prayer

My little brother asked if I would post the story of his friend's little sister who is battling cancer from a brain tumor. She is 12 years old and needs prayer. Please read her story and join us in praying for Mara.

This is a letter from her mom:

Mara has finished her second round of Chemo. Although it isn't easy and she has lots of tears, she is getting through it. I am so incredibly proud of her.
She is a trooper. the background is.....
I took her to the doctor in August of 2008 for headaches, weight loss, & extreme thirst.
The nurse practitioner wanted to do an MRI that day when diabetes was ruled out.
The doctor who never laid eyes on her said no to the MRI. She said it presented like an eating disorder. I argued this point but they did not do the MRI b/c it was expensive and they wanted to rule out the ED.
Well .... they were wrong.
Moms! You all know your kids. don't take what they say blindly. I always knew Mara did not fit the diagnosis of eating disorder but she continued to lose weight and got sicker everyday.
once she was down 15lbs. we admitted her to the Eating disorder institute b/c she needed to be hospitalized. Her vitals were in bad shape. this was Dec of 08
After being treated terribly by them and losing 7 more lbs she finally got an infection from the feeding tube they placed and was sent to Children's hospital.
Still no answers.
I brought her home at 58lbs and did my very best along with her NEW pediatrician to get her out of danger and her weight high enough that test results would not look like malnutrition.
Her pediatrician wanted her to go to an endocrinologist because of a low cortisol test I had demanded at the ED Clinic.We went to the Mayo and inside of 10 minutes the doc diagnosed her with "Diabetes Insipidus" it is not the same as juvenile diabetes it has more to do with water and sodium levels. The confirmation of this diagnosis was an MRI.
FINALLY she gets the MRI and it is 1 year and 1 month later. Her doc called that night with the bad news.
It had been given an additional 13 months to grow.
Her diagnosis is :
Diabetes Insipidus & Pineal Germinoma (brain tumor).
The Germinoma caused the insipidus.
along with low levels of many hormones.
The prognosis is good on curing the cancer. The big question mark is how much of her hormone function will come back. and how much damage to the pituitary glad and hypothalimus.
My prayers for her is COMPLETE WHOLENESS. Lacking nothing!
As this tumor dies her other symptoms will go away.

Thank You for your prayers and God Bless You All!!
Sincerely,
Mara's mom
Kim

1 comments:

mrs boo radley said...

This breaks my heart.

Praying.