Thousands of dollars were raised Thursday night during a benefit at Northside Elementary School for nine year old Allison Rogers, who has battled Ewing Sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, since the age of six.
A meal and silent auction were held to raise money for the Rogers family followed by a performance by Country Music Entertainers Aaron and Thea Tippin and the Smithville Cumberland Presbyterian Church Praise and Worship Team.
After several rounds of chemotherapy and a surgery to replace a portion of her left femur with a donor bone, it appeared that Allison was on her way to recovery. However after two years, Allison again experienced pain in her left leg and on February 11th, doctor’s discovered that the cancer had returned.
Allison had another surgery in May to replace the left femur from just above her knee up to her hip. In June she faced stronger chemotherapy, and a stem cell infusion. She is now facing radiation.
Allison’s father, Wes Rogers, says Allison is recovering well. “She’s doing really, really well. We’re just blessed at how well she is doing. She’s recovering well. She’s been through a whole lot of chemotherapy, surgery, and now radiation. The stem cell transplant was really the worst of it. The chemo that they gave her for that caused her to have a great deal of pain, mouth sores, skin problems, and nausea. We were in the hospital for just over three weeks. The doctors thought we might be in there longer than that but once she started recovering, she really bounced back well. That really went better than we expected. We were able to come home from the hospital the fourth weekend after we went in and they said the average was about six weeks before anyone could come home. Right now we’re staying at the Ronald McDonald House in Nashville during the weeks and coming home on the weekends and we’re glad we’re able to do that. She’s able to be around people. She’s not supposed to get hugs and things like that, but sometimes they happen before you can stop them.”
Rogers also described the surgery to replace Allison’s left femur. “They replaced it with what they call a mega prosthesis. It goes from the ball of the hip joint all the way down to just above her knee and it’s metal. It’s expandable and adjustable so that when the hip socket grows they’ll be able to change out the ball and put in a bigger one and they’ll be able to make it longer with one relatively minor surgery.”
“The radiation she now faces is intended to make sure that the cancer never comes back. Before they would ever begin a stem cell transplant they wanted to make sure there was no evidence of disease. She already had six different week long periods of chemotherapy before they were able to say there was no evidence of disease and then there was the surgery where the doctor went in there and cut out where he knew the tumor had been in the bone, because the tumor that was inside the bone was still partially alive.”
The Rogers family would like to thank everyone for their donations and expressions of love and support for them and Allison.
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