In June 2018, 11-year-old Roxley Doss from Buda, Texas, was diagnosed with a rare inoperable brain tumor.
In a final attempt to help the girl and slow the growth of the tumor, the doctors prescribed Roxley radiation therapy 6 days a week for 6 weeks.
In September, the girl had an MRI scan and it showed … the complete absence of any traces of a tumor in the brain. And this surprised and delighted not only the girl herself and her parents, but also the doctors.
According to experts, cases of spontaneous regression (disappearance) of cancerous tumors have been noticed before, but this has never been recorded with such a terrible tumor, due to which a person was given a maximum of several months of life.
A rare malignant tumor discovered in Roxley in June is called Diffuse Brain Stem Cell Tumor (DIPG). It is most commonly found in young children and is found in about 200-300 people annually in the United States. These children are immediately considered doomed, since with any treatment, at best one child in a hundred survives.
Shocked by their daughter's diagnosis, Roxley's parents, hoping for a medical error, were examined in four more clinics, but everywhere they were confirmed to have DIPG. And there the girl's parents were told that the treatment in this case was useless.
Roxley's symptoms were standard for such a diagnosis. At the beginning of June, she began to have a severe headache and became very tired. After several visits to the pediatrician, the girl was taken to the Austin Children's Hospital, where she was found to have DIPG.
Promotional video:
After that, Roxley and her parents visited another clinic in Austin, and then leading clinics in Boston, Baltimore and Houston, where the diagnosis was found to be correct.
DIPG is a very aggressive cancer and grows very quickly. It is located at the base of the brain and at the top of the spine. The reasons for its appearance are unknown.
When a tumor begins to grow, it presses on an area of the brain that is responsible for a number of critical body functions such as breathing, sleeping, and blood pressure. Over time, the swelling affects the functions of the heartbeat, breathing, swallowing, vision and balance.
Most people with DIPG survive for 9 months at best after diagnosis, and some live even less even with radiation therapy. However, when Roxley started receiving radiation therapy, her parents hoped and prayed that it would at least slightly slow down the growth of the tumor and prolong the girl's life.
They had reasons for this, since according to doctors, radiation therapy in 70% of cases really slows down tumor growth and prolongs the life of patients by three months.
On September 7, Roxley came to the clinic for an MRI of the brain, and three days later her parents came for the result. Both the doctor and the parents were shocked when it turned out that the tomography showed the complete absence of a tumor in the girl's brain.
In the photo below, on the left, summer MRI images of Roxley with a tumor, and on the right are already September ones - without a tumor.
According to Dr. Momna Hajmadi, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath in the UK, it is possible that one of the reasons for the spontaneous cure was the strong reaction of the girl's immune cells to tumor genetic markers or something else.
But according to surgeons, they do not remember a similar case with such a serious cancer in medical practice.
The girl's family is sure that a miracle happened and thank God for healing Roxley.
Roxley herself now has many plans for life and wants to learn how to ride.