OAKLAND, Calif. — Everything looked normal at first.
Lillian Grace Borden was born on Sept. 5 after an uneventful pregnancy. She was a beautiful, and seemingly healthy, baby girl. To her parents, she was perfect.
But ABC7 says a nurse noticed something wasn’t quite right. Lily wasn’t moving her arms and legs they way a newborn should, and an MRI revealed something on her brain stem.
It was an aggressive tumor. Doctors said, because of its location, surgery simply wasn’t an option.
“It was a really bad situation,” Dr. Caroline Hastings told Fox10.
Chemotherapy was Lily’s only hope. After a round of general chemo, her parents got the go-ahead to put her on a new, targeted kind of chemotherapy.
And it worked.
Three weeks later, Lily’s tumor was gone.
“Everyone in the hospital is in shock,” Lillian’s mother Leann told ABC7.
“They say it’s magic. I say it’s faith.”
Doctors at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Cali. officially declared her cancer-free in January, and Lily got to ring the bell – with a little help from mom and dad.
Author: Dale Greenstein, TEGNA
