Sara's Story

Ten-year-old Sara Kelly conquers an extremely rare cancer.

Jennifer and David Kelly thought their daughter's behavior was common for a pre-teen girl. In fact, their daughter was showing symptoms of something extraordinarily uncommon—especially for a 10-year-old girl.

"She complained about stomach cramps and flu symptoms," says Sara's mom, Jennifer Kelly. "She didn't eat much. We thought it was a typical girl thing."

After Sara stayed home from school a couple of times, Jennifer took her to see the family pediatrician, Dr. Bogdan Mscichowski. Dr. Mscichowski examined Sara thoroughly and, overall, thought she seemed healthy. When he pressed on her abdomen, though, Sara spit up bile.

Dr. Mscichowski sent the family to Strong Memorial Hospital, part of the University of Rochester Medical Center, for more testing. The most likely problem, he thought, was that Sara had appendicitis.

At Strong, Sara received an ultrasound examination of her abdomen. At one point during the exam, the doctor in charge looked at the screen with surprise. He told Sara's parents, "She needs to drink this contrast dye, and quickly." Sara was then rushed down the hall for a CT scan.

A short while later, a nurse who Jennifer knew well came in and took Sara aside while the doctor spoke to her parents. He told them that Sara had a mass in her abdomen. Jennifer's husband, David, had recently lost his mother to cancer. He sat down overwhelmed.

"I can't do this," he told Jennifer. "You have to do this." As it turned out, both parents, as well as Sara, would demonstrate remarkable courage and resilience over the following months.

The next morning, Jennifer and David met with Dr. David Korones, an oncologist at the Golisano Children's Hospital. He gave them the diagnosis: Sara had ovarian cancer, an extremely rare cancer for a child. She would need to have surgery to have the tumor removed. David told Dr. Korones, "You have to promise us that you will make her well."

Dr. Korones introduced them to the surgeon who would do the operation, Dr. George Drugas. Dr. Drugas told Jennifer and David that he could do the surgery that very day, but he preferred to wait until the next morning so he could have his whole team together. Sara's parents agreed, and the surgery was planned for the following day.

Sara was taken into surgery early the next morning. Dr. Drugas would need to make an incision from her breastbone to the top of her pubic bone in order to get the entire tumor. The surgery went smoothly. At one point, Dr. Drugas took a photograph of Sara's tumor while it was still in her. He would later share the image with Jennifer and David.

"It was ugly," Jennifer says. "And it was the size of a Nerf football. Thinking back to that, and how her stomach had looked, I really should have thought she was pregnant."

Sara's surgery was on a Friday, and she was back home by Monday. A little less than three weeks later, she was back in the hospital for chemotherapy.

"She was a trooper," says Jennifer. "Dr. Korones told us that she was a very good patient. She had a motto: What has to be done, has to be done."

Over the course of her treatment, Sara matured tremendously. She became more patient and learned self-control. Perhaps more than anything, she learned that things take time. Between the surgery and her chemotherapy, she would be out of school for a total of three months. The school district got in touch with Jennifer and told her not to worry. They set up a tutor for Sara.

The whole family—Sara has one older brother, Alex, and one younger brother, Dylan—would celebrate the New Year at Golisano Children's Hospital.

"Our normal plan," Jennifer says, "would have been to go out to dinner than come back home and play some games with the kids. So we went out and got some food, then took it into the Ronald McDonald room. Then, the staff let us go in the play room, which isn't usually open at night. They let us go in and play some games. Everyone was so nice."

"The hospital was really, really nice," Jennifer continues. "It was very kid-oriented, and very relaxing. It was very accommodating for our boys, too. The boys were well taken care of."

Soon, it was time for Sara to go back to school at Palmyra Macedon Elementary School. During the course of her chemo treatment, though, she had lost all of her hair. Sara was matter of fact about it. She would just wear a hat to school. On her first day of class, she entered her classroom to see that all of the other students—even her teacher—were all wearing hats, too. The Friday of her first week back, all of the students in the school wore hats in honor of Sara.

Sara's prognosis looks excellent: She has less than a 1% chance of a recurrence. She and her family have nothing but praise for her doctors and all the staff at the hospital.

"We love Dr. Korones!" says Jennifer. "Sara's actually taller than him now. But he's just a wonderful doctor and very easy to talk to. There's one thing he would do that I thought was so rare: He would call and say that he had just called the top expert in the nation. He didn't act like he was a god."

Jennifer raves about Sara's surgeon, Dr. Drugas, and his can-do attitude, as well as Dr. Korones's staff and nurse practitioner, Margaret, for her big heart. And surprisingly, for someone whose daughter was diagnosed with an exceptionally rare cancer, Jennifer believes the whole experience was very special.

"This whole thing, it was horrible," Jennifer says. "I would never wish it on anyone. But we have really had such an amazing experience, too. Sara was a spokewoman at a hospital luncheon. She was on TV when they did their telethon. As terrible as it was, we made a lot of new friends and inspired a lot of people."

Many people still ask Jennifer how Sara's is doing. And Jennifer's response, while expressing the frustration common to all parents, feels like an incredible blessing to her:

"Sometimes I just say, 'I'm ready to kill her!' She turned into a typical 12-year-old."