Young patient beats rare cancer at Texas Children Hospital

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Friday, January 6, 2017
Young patient beats rare form of cancer at TX Children's
After a roller coaster of a year, a young patient at Texas Children's has beat a rare form of cancer.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- It was a year ago when we introduced you to Eden Green.

"Last year was a roller coaster," Eden told ABC13.

A roller coaster indeed -- she was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer.

"It's a primitive round blue cell primitive neural tumor. It's the type of cancer we haven't seen in prior patients," said Dr. Jennifer Foster, Clinical Co-Director of the Neuroblastoma Program.

ORIGINAL REPORT: TCH Cancer Center helps little ones fight big battles

Even though Eden's cancer was extremely rare, the team at Texas Children's Cancer Center was able to tailor specific therapies just for her.

"We came up with an individualized plan that was targeted directly towards the type of tumor that the pathologists were seeing underneath the microscope," Dr. Foster said.

As she went through treatments, Eden's parents never lost hope.

"We're very strong in our faith and we gave it all over to God," said Eden's father, Wilford Green.

On Eden's eleventh birthday, she finished her chemotherapy treatments. Shortly after, the family received the news they've been praying for.

"PET scans came back showed her body was clean," Wilford recalled.

Eden was cancer-free. For someone living with a rare disease that no one else had, she fought it and survived -- but there was still a long road to recovery ahead.

"About eight weeks ago, we had hip surgery, because they found dead bone in Eden's hip due to the chemotherapy," Wilford said.

Even though Eden shows no more signs of cancer, she will continue her appointments at the hospital for maintenance treatments. With everything she's been through, Eden says this experience might be paving the way for what she wants to do in the future.

"It just changed me, and I wanted to be a nurse. I have all the nursing stuff," Eden said.