Eight-year-old Utah girl diagnosed with rare form of breast cancer
An eight-year-old girl in the United States is one of the youngest people ever to receive a breast cancer diagnosis after she developed a rare form of the disease.
Chrissy Turner, who lives with her family in Centerville, Utah, near Salt Lake City, found a lump in her chest last month and, after an urgent visit to the doctor, was found to have a “one in a million” form of cancer called secretory carcinoma.
The little girl is scheduled to have a mastectomy in early December to remove her breast tissue.
Chrissy said she was frightened when she heard the news.
“I was scared to figure out what it was,” she told ABC TV in an interview. “But I knew I could fight it off and I hope that I can fight it off.”
Her mother, Annette Turner, fought back tears as she said the family was devastated.
“It was such a shock,” she said. “No child should have to go through cancer.”
Mrs Turner told ABC4 she “broke down” when hearing that her daughter had cancer.
“It’s a very rare form of breast cancer,” she said. “It’s called secretory carcinoma. Only one in one million are diagnosed and she is the youngest that they’ve run across having this particular type of breast cancer.”
Friends of the family have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for medical bills.
Breast cancers in such young children are not unknown, but they are very rare.One report in the scientific literature in 2000 concerned a girl of just six years old.In the UK, fewer than five girls under the age of 10 were diagnosed with breast cancer per year from 2010 to 2012, according to Cancer Research UK.
Most breast lumps in children are benign. The few that are confirmed as breast cancer are less likely to spread than in adults, although there is a risk that they will not be found until quite late on. The treatment is usually mastectomy. Radiation therapy poses more risks for a child, who is still developing, than for an adult.
Annette and her husband, Troy Turner, said they were reeling from the news, not just because it was so unexpected for their young daughter to get such a serious diagnosis normally associated with adults, as well as a rare form of it, but because they are both cancer survivors.
Annette Turner had cervical cancer, and her husband is currently battling a return of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which he first developed when Chrissy was a baby.
“It’s a struggle every day worrying about my family, about my husband and now my baby girl,” said Annette Turner.
She said the little girl had been a tonic for the family during her father’s earlier round of chemotherapy.
“She was our therapy when he was going through chemotherapy,” she said. “She was always making us laugh and she’s got the wit of someone far beyond her age.”
“We’ll be there for you,” she tearfully told Chrissy.
Annette Turner wrote a message to the Guardian saying the family was heading at that moment to the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City to discuss plans for surgery.
“Today is a very full day for our little angel,” she wrote.
One of the doctors treating Chrissy, Brian Bucher, said that secretory carcinoma was “very treatable”. It accounts for just 0.15% of breast cancers.
“Chrissy will need to undergo a simple mastectomy to remove all of her remaining breast tissue, to prevent this cancer from coming back,” Bucher said.
“It’s a fear that we always have,” Annette Turner said.
The youngest known sufferer of secretory carcinoma was a three-year-old Korean girl, reported in medical literature in 2000, who was operated on after a chest growth was discovered.
In a post on a Facebook page that the family is calling Chrissy’s Alliance, Annette Turner thanked friends and family for their “outpouring” of love and support. Pictures accompanying posts show Chrissy wearing a cowboy hat, laughing, looking serious and writing on pink balloons with her sister: “Fight like a girl.” There is also a link to a video clip of her looking brave but filled with trepidation while being rolled towards a scanning machine in hospital.
A family friend, Melissa Papaj, has been active on social media in trying to raise awareness of the family’s plight and the need for support.
She pointed out that Troy Turner is a military veteran from the first Gulf war in the early 90s. “As a decorated veteran while serving in Operation Desert Storm, never in their lives together did Troy and Annette expect that they would fight tougher battles, but they were wrong.”
Papaj said Annette Turner burst into tears on the telephone when she told her about Chrissy’s rare form of breast cancer. “My heart sank,” Papaj wrote on Facebook, and her thoughts turned to her own eight-year-old and how she would cope if the same plight hit her family.
The Turner family and friends have organised a GoFundMe campaign to help to pay for medical costs for Chrissy, who will need ongoing medical care and monitoring.
“We are going to fight this as a family,” Annette Turner said. “We are going to be there for Chrissy, no matter what”.
Photo Caption: Chrissy Turner, an eight-year-old who is suffering from breast cancer. Photograph: www.gofundme.com/Chrissysalliance
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