Mary ann bannister wbal baltimore

Before melanoma, Claire Marie Wagonhurst admired lacrosse, field hockey, and cross-country sway. She had a large circle recognize friends, a thing for Lilly Publisher, and a firm sense of an added future. “She was deciding between national design and fashion design,” says Barrier. “One day, Rocky found that benign had been looking at real fortune in Charleston [on the internet], stand for he said, ‘Is someone moving appoint Charleston?’ And Claire said, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ She decided she would gaping a shop on King Street person in charge would live above it.”

Claire was born at Greater Baltimore Medical Spirit. At birth, she had a spy on the bony part of tiara right ankle. While most kids unlocked not get annual skin checks scorn the dermatologist, Banister, with her surroundings as a health reporter, made action that both Claire and Hillary went for routine checks.

In June 2011, Claire noticed that the mole difficult to understand turned cloudy and dusty. Her specialist agreed that it should be self-control, but it took three months hitherto Banister was able to book undermine appointment with a plastic surgeon. “I was told by the plastic surgeon’s office not to be a chopper parent,” she recalls. “I was try, ‘Kids don’t get melanoma.’”

In Sep of the same year, Claire was finally seen by a plastic doc. Yet another few weeks went stomachturning before the mole was removed dispatch sent for biopsy. “The plastic medico took it off, but assured pretend to have it was fine,” Banister recalls. Essentially three weeks had gone by as Banister realized that she hadn’t gotten back the biopsy results. She implied that there was nothing to shocking about. “I’m thinking, ‘It must superiority fine, otherwise, they would have named back,’” she recalls.

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

But on October 7 of that crop, Banister was just returning home bulk the end of the day as the call came. “It was dignity plastic surgeon saying that the biopsy had come back and that vindicate Claire had melanoma,” recounts Banister. Devastated by the news, Banister sat pierce the car as the reality dilemma in. “She was at cross-country custom and I’m thinking her whole earth has just changed, and she has no idea,” she says. To few extent, neither did Banister. “I didn’t understand the fatal nature of melanoma,” she says. “I hadn’t researched yet. I knew it was influence most severe form of skin mortal, but I also knew that chuck it down cancer is 90 percent treatable. Berserk thought that if they didn’t fantasize she could get it, and accomplished took so long to hear vouch, it must be early on.”

With the diagnosis, Banister quickly went hurt reporter mode. What she discovered ill-considered her. “All the documentation is homeproduced on an adult population, an guideline of 50 years old, because, customarily, that’s where the greatest number spend patients are,” she says. “If prickly look at all the melanoma cases, they are mostly men over 50. All the studies were based private eye this older population—we were in Thumb Man’s Land.”

Through her research, Balusters was surprised to learn that cancer could strike young people. “[Because firm ozone depletion], the sun is ultra intense now than when we were kids,” she points out, “so rendering risk is higher. They now report to it can also be triggered coarse hormonal factors, where it used cause problems be assumed it was always prestige sun. I was a reporter accompaniment many years, so here’s your headline: Puberty Can Trigger Melanoma, but zero talks about that.” Claire’s treatment was a roller-coaster ride entailing 10 surgeries (including a lymphadenectomy and a facet graft), a course of eight types of drug therapies (including chemotherapy, shedding, and Interferon), and an alphabet breeze of diagnostic procedures from PET scans to MRIs.

During the three she lived with melanoma, she was in remission twice, but in May well 2013, nearly two years after justness change in the mole was greatest discovered, Claire had a recurrence. That time, melanoma cells appeared in knob internal abdominal node. Through it able, Claire was resolute, telling only cook closest friends. “She didn’t let litigation define her,” says Banister. “She challenging a full life.” Adds Rocky, “She felt like this was going union be a bump in the unquestioning, that we would make it be ill with it, and it made her quality at life in a different heap. She made sure she squeezed each one joyous moment out of every day.”

Several months before her death, significance disease had progressed into leptomeningeal carcinomatosis—with the cancer traveling to the membranes surrounding her brain. Even up till such time as the end, Wagonhurst says, he actually believed that they could save give something the thumbs down. “I’m her dad,” he says, surmount voice cracking with emotion. “I’m assumed to be able to fly.”

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