Children often have trouble with changing air pressure during take-off and landing on airplanes, which is what one Maryland mom figured was causing her daughter pain on a flight to Washington.
However, 32-year-old Michelle Russell knew something else was wrong when her then four-year-old daughter Claire started complaining of back pain mid-flight that turned into a throbbing, intense pain in her ribs. The pain only got worse and worse as the flight continued, and Michelle rushed her little girl to the hospital the minute they landed.
“Claire was learning to do handstands and backflips when she first told us about a pain in her back, but we thought it was just her overdoing it. We were flying for a wedding when we knew something wasn’t right. Claire was in absolute agony,” Michelle said.
“Doctors thought she had a kidney infection and three days after being on antibiotics I found her crying in her sleep, it was then that I knew in my gut something really was wrong,” Michelle said of the moment which prompted her to push doctors for an X-ray.
“I remember seeing the technician suddenly look really frightened during her scans and knew it couldn’t be a good sign, it was horrible,” Michelle said about the X-ray, which revealed a large box-shaped tumor between two of her ribs and across to her spine.
After 17 rounds of chemotherapy, which lasted about a year and caused Clair to lose a quarter of her body weight, Doctors managed to shrink the Ewing Sarcoma mass before finally surgically removing it and shaving down some of her spinal cord in order to ensure it wouldn’t grow back.
It’s now been a year since the now six-year-old has been in remission, and Michelle knows that that flight to Washington is the reason her daughter is still here today. “Going on that plane could have saved our daughter’s life, without it we wouldn’t have thought the pain in her back was anything more than muscle or growing pains.”
Would you have rushed your child to the hospital if they were in a lot of pain on a flight? Let us know what you think in the comments below, and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Caters News Agency]
Doctors Find 4-Year-Old Has Cancer After Air Pressure On Plane Causes Severe Pain is an article from: LifeDaily