10-year-old Fighting Rare Breast Cancer

Breast cancer. After skin cancer, it’s the most common cancer in women in the United States. American women have a one in eight chance of developing some type of breast cancer in their lifetime. The American Cancer Society says that “an estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among women in the United States.” But, as shocking at the numbers may be, it’s not new news. We’ve heard it all before.

Imagine now, a 10-year-old girl discovering a lump in her breast tissue – a lump that turns out to be cancer. Not only that, the type of cancer she has is so rare, it only affects .15% of women who have breast cancer. That 10-year-old girl is Hannah Powell-Auslam of Fullerton, California, and she discovered she had cancer this past April.

Breast cancer in adolescents isn’t unheard of, but to have such a rare type of adult cancer is virtually unknown. Her doctors aren’t sure why Hannah developed the breast cancers, although there are a couple of theories. One is that she could be carrying the gene that makes breast cancer more common in certain families, or it could be because of all the pollutants in the air, settling in the breast tissue as the breasts begin to develop.

Hannah has had a mastectomy and is undergoing chemotherapy. If you’d like to see a clip about Hannah, click on the TV screen below. You can also visit the website Hannah’s parents put up to share Hannah’s story: Our Little Sweet Pea .

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Images: Stock.xchng, iStock