Doctors give up, but teen fights on

After three chest surgeries and three radiation and chemotherapy treatments - one of them lasting 14 months - Carissa Pastore's physician at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute in New York City recently told the 17-year-old Spring Hill resident she didn't need to undergo more traumatic medical procedures if she didn't want to.

To that, Carissa replied," "What else am I supposed to do? Just go home and die?' " said her mother Brenda Dulje, recalling that conversation this week.

Yes, the doctor replied.

"It wasn't what we expected to hear. It upset us both," said Dulje, who refuses to give up the fight. So does her daughter, a biology enthusiast whose biggest wish is to swim with dolphins in the Florida Keys.

The youngest of six siblings, Carissa was diagnosed with cancer when she was 10, after she began complaining about a pain in her side. At All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, she was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare childhood disease that attacks soft tissue and bone. Surgeons removed a mass from the lower right lobe of her lung, then used 40 staples to close the opening. Fourteen months of radiation and chemotherapy followed... [Cancer - Topix.net]

Posted July 2004 | Permanent Link


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