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17-year-old Dana Scatton, who’s seven months pregnant, is not only fighting for her own life, but also for the life of her unborn child after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The teenager from Pennsylvania in the US is now hoping for a Christmas miracle after she was diagnosed with an incurable and inoperable brain tumour called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) last week.
Dana is set to give birth in February, but doctors are urging her to deliver the baby in three weeks’ time so that she can start radiation therapy which may prolong her life.
Without treatment Dana will only have two to three months to live, according to Daily Mail. With treatment, she could live for another nine months.
The tumour is typically found in children under the age of 10 and the chance of surviving for as long as five years with this type of cancer is only 1%.
But Dana is determined to stay positive. “I’m not going to go by what they [the doctors] say, I’m expecting a miracle.”
Dana went to the doctor in November when she started having trouble speaking.
“I noticed that it took me a little time to swallow, then walking got harder and it was even hard to speak,” Dana says.
At first she thought her symptoms were related to her pregnancy. “I thought it could be the way the baby was sitting on nerves,” she says.
But a CAT scan and an MRI showed she has a large tumour at the base of her brain, Mirror reports. This type of tumour grows amidst the nerves, making it inoperable.
When she was told of the tumour her first thought was: “Is my baby going to be okay?”
Radiation therapy is not performed on pregnant women. The cancer itself is unlikely to affect the baby but aggressive cancer treatment can lead to complications. Birth defects as a result of radiation therapy include stunted growth and abnormal brain activity.
Sources: Mirror, Daily Mail, Hollywood Life
