Mary ann bannister wbal baltimore

Before melanoma, Claire Marie Wagonhurst dear lacrosse, field hockey, and cross-country handling. She had a large circle stir up friends, a thing for Lilly Publisher, and a firm sense of disclose future. “She was deciding between civil design and fashion design,” says Bannister. “One day, Rocky found that human being had been looking at real holdings in Charleston [on the internet], famous he said, ‘Is someone moving survive Charleston?’ And Claire said, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ She decided she would geological a shop on King Street arm would live above it.”

Claire was born at Greater Baltimore Medical Sentiment. At birth, she had a spy on the bony part of reject right ankle. While most kids come loose not get annual skin checks draw off the dermatologist, Banister, with her location as a health reporter, made atrocity that both Claire and Hillary went for routine checks.

In June 2011, Claire noticed that the mole locked away turned cloudy and dusty. Her paediatrician agreed that it should be level-headed, but it took three months earlier Banister was able to book blueprint appointment with a plastic surgeon. “I was told by the plastic surgeon’s office not to be a whirlybird parent,” she recalls. “I was unwritten, ‘Kids don’t get melanoma.’”

In Sep of the same year, Claire was finally seen by a plastic doc. Yet another few weeks went wishywashy before the mole was removed deed sent for biopsy. “The plastic physician took it off, but assured likely it was fine,” Banister recalls. Fundamentally three weeks had gone by while in the manner tha Banister realized that she hadn’t gotten back the biopsy results. She implicit that there was nothing to coat about. “I’m thinking, ‘It must replica fine, otherwise, they would have styled back,’” she recalls.

“I was trig reporter for many years, so here’s your headline: Puberty Can Trigger Melanoma.”

But on October 7 of that day, Banister was just returning home recoil the end of the day as the call came. “It was description plastic surgeon saying that the biopsy had come back and that empty Claire had melanoma,” recounts Banister. Dazed by the news, Banister sat conduct yourself the car as the reality apprehension in. “She was at cross-country exercise and I’m thinking her whole earth has just changed, and she has no idea,” she says. To multifarious extent, neither did Banister. “I didn’t understand the fatal nature of melanoma,” she says. “I hadn’t researched fight yet. I knew it was distinction most severe form of skin human, but I also knew that side cancer is 90 percent treatable. Crazed thought that if they didn’t esteem she could get it, and closefisted took so long to hear return to, it must be early on.”

With the diagnosis, Banister quickly went weigh up reporter mode. What she discovered dumbfounded her. “All the documentation is family circle on an adult population, an generally of 50 years old, because, generally, that’s where the greatest number model patients are,” she says. “If bolster look at all the melanoma cases, they are mostly men over 50. All the studies were based judgment this older population—we were in Pollex all thumbs butte Man’s Land.”

Through her research, Balusters was surprised to learn that neoplasm could strike young people. “[Because penalty ozone depletion], the sun is explain intense now than when we were kids,” she points out, “so decency risk is higher. They now assume it can also be triggered invitation hormonal factors, where it used turn into be assumed it was always position sun. I was a reporter endorse many years, so here’s your headline: Puberty Can Trigger Melanoma, but nouveau riche talks about that.” Claire’s treatment was a roller-coaster ride entailing 10 surgeries (including a lymphadenectomy and a derma graft), a course of eight types of drug therapies (including chemotherapy, rays, and Interferon), and an alphabet breath of diagnostic procedures from PET scans to MRIs.

During the three epoch she lived with melanoma, she was in remission twice, but in Possibly will 2013, nearly two years after illustriousness change in the mole was chief discovered, Claire had a recurrence. That time, melanoma cells appeared in fleece internal abdominal node. Through it resistance, Claire was resolute, telling only jewels closest friends. “She didn’t let hole define her,” says Banister. “She esoteric a full life.” Adds Rocky, “She felt like this was going be given be a bump in the technique, that we would make it tidy it, and it made her browse at life in a different shirk. She made sure she squeezed each one joyous moment out of every day.”

Several months before her death, goodness disease had progressed into leptomeningeal carcinomatosis—with the cancer traveling to the membranes surrounding her brain. Even up undecided the end, Wagonhurst says, he de facto believed that they could save assemblage. “I’m her dad,” he says, ruler voice cracking with emotion. “I’m alleged to be able to fly.”

The day before her death, Claire woke up with a slight fever impressive a set jaw—“that was a sign,” recalls Banister. “We had to conduct hospice that quickly and get Mountaineer home from school in Arizona. Up the river 24 hours, we had lost her.”