Three-year-old girl beats breast cancer

The youngest person ever to be diagnosed with breast cancer has made a full recovery at the age of three, reported the Daily Mail on Sunday.

When Melanie Hunter found a little lump on her daughter Aleisha’s chest, she thought it was a harmless cyst.

“It was a tiny little hard lump, the size of a pea,” Melanie told the Daily Mail.

After hospital tests, Melanie was told it was nothing serious and Aleisha was sent home, but the lump carried on growing.

After the lump had grown to 2 cm and was causing Aleisha such pain she was unable to sleep, Melanie took her daughter back to the hospital.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me what it was,” Melanie said. “I was unbelievably shocked -- stunned. I didn’t think a child that young could get breast cancer.”

Aleisha, from Toronto, Canada, underwent a mastectomy and had 16 lymph nodes removed from her armpit to see if the cancer had spread after the doctors discovered the cause of the lump in December 2008, when she was two.

Luckily, the cancer had not spread which meant Aleisha did not need chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

“I know I had cancer in my booby and that the doctors made it better,” Aleisha said. “I know that cancer can make some people go to heaven, but I am better now,” she told the Daily Mail.

According to the Daily Mail, surgeon Nancy Down said, “I’ve been dealing with breast cancer cases for 25 years and have never come across a patient this young. She is the youngest known case in the world.”

Doctors have said the cancer is unlikely to return, but Aeisha will need regular check-ups for the next few years and reconstructive breast surgery when she is a teenager.

The previous youngest known breast cancer patient is Hannah Powell-Auslam from California, who was 10 years old when she was diagnosed in 2008.

By Moon Ye-bin (yebinm@heraldcorp.com)
Intern reporter

Edited by John Power