'My daughter fought cancer four times ... now she'll live a full life'
The now 13-year-old teenager from Melbourne was first diagnosed with cancer when she was just two, but is now just months away from being declared cured after a grueling decade of treatment.
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Robyn Broome was changing her two-year-old daughter Georgia’s nappy a few weeks before Christmas in 2012 when she felt a lump near her pelvis.
Being a medical receptionist, Robyn wanted to investigate the cause straight away.
“Thankfully my doctors listened to me,” she said. “We went into the Children’s Hospital on a Monday, and we got a diagnosis on Tuesday.”
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Georgia was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of the soft tissue which generally begins in muscles attached to bones.
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Four rounds of "intensive chemo" for two-year-old
The diagnosis came within six of Robyn first finding the lump, and in that time Georgia’s little body was put through an MRI scan, a CT scan, a PET scan, and a biopsy before chemotherapy started after two weeks.
“We did four rounds of intensive chemo where she got very sick, so we dropped a chemo and she managed to be strong enough to not have as many hospital admissions,” Robyn said.
“She did 12 months of chemo and radiation therapy which gave her severe radiation burns, so she ended up in hospital for burns treatment as well.”
Georgia’s treatment finished in October, 2014, but sadly her cancer relapsed just four months later in her brain.
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"She had emergency surgery that day"
Robyn said she decided to get Georgia checked out after several bouts of sickness.
“She had a couple of days where she threw up in the car, but she was still running around with her sisters, so it didn’t really slow her down,” she said.
“One day she was really lethargic, so I called the doctor and drove into the hospital for a CT scan.
“We had one the next day, and within 40 minutes I had the nurse manager and a solid mass tumour professor in front of me.
“She had emergency surgery that day, they got in there and whipped the tumour out.”
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"They found a lump in her lung"
Georgia went through another 12 months of treatment, which Robyn described as a “walk-in-the-park” compared to her first, and was cancer-free for two years before another blow.
“We had a routine check in January, 2018, and they found a lump in her lung,” Robyn said.
“It wasn’t a very big one, but they wanted to go in after it, so she had more surgery.
“We started chemo again with 10 rounds of radiation, but they found another lump in May, and at that point they sat me down and told me the cancer was resistant to chemotherapy and she was terminal.”
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Doctors' "stupid question" for Georgia
The doctor gave Robyn three options: they could operate now, give Georgia more treatment, or do nothing.
She told Kidspot that was a “stupid question” and told doctors to throw everything at Georgia’s new scare.
That was the right decision, as doctors couldn’t find the second lump during surgery, and it was later determined it wasn’t more cancer, but potentially infection.
“We kept doing chemo every three weeks, and Georgia was tolerating it really well,” Robyn said.
“We put her on a trial drug where she had to take 15 pills a day, and she was on that for three years before she told us she’d had enough.”
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"They told me her cancer was back"
Georgia’s story wasn’t over though, as Robyn noticed some issues when she started going through puberty.
“She was 12, and she has long coarse hair, but she was developing a monobrow and a moustache, and then her voice changed,” Robyn said.
“I initially thought she was just changing, but we went in to have more scans, and they told me her cancer was back.
“I asked for a look, and they pointed out a little circle in her abdomen. I said it was her ovaries, because we’d moved them away earlier when she was having radiation around her pelvis.”
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Teenager's gruelling decade of cancer treatment
Georgia did have another small tumour, but it wasn’t a return of her original cancer.
“That tumour was producing testosterone, her levels were at 10 when they should have been at zero,” Robyn said.
“We removed the ovary in February last year. Her other ovary got a bit of radiation when she was younger, but they said it still looked good.”
Despite going through more in her first 13 years of life than most people deal with in a lifetime, Georgia is now in remission, and will be declared “completely cured” as of February next year.
In that time, Georgia has been admitted to hospital 32 times and spent 90 nights, had nine surgeries, 32 MRI scans, 30 CT scans, five PET scans, two bone marrow tests, two lumbar punctures, nine ultrasounds, four echocardiograms, five blood transfusions, 10 platelet transfusions, 53 bouts of radiation therapy, two port insertions and removals, and “way too many” chemo sessions, but she still beat her cancer.
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"She just wants to do everything and anything"
Now the family can turn their eye towards Georgia’s future, and they’ve started by taking advantage of tutoring through the Ronald McDonald Learning Program.
Robyn said Georgia still had some issues stemming from her brain surgery, but the tutors had helped her with any learning difficulties she’d come up against.
“She’s passing school and getting good marks,” she said. “She has Sylvie who tutors her in maths and gives her tricks to get her work done.
“Georgia does choir, she’s in musicals, and she plays a lot of sport, so she’s got limited time to get everything done.
“She just wants to do everything and anything, and I’ve seen such a big chance since she went to high school.
“She loves school, she’s made all new friends, and it’s been a big change, but also a positive change, for her.”
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