A pregnant 17-year-old girl is fighting for her life and the life of her baby after being given three to nine months to live due to a rare and incurable brain tumor.
Dana Scatton was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (or, DIPG) last week and is due to give birth to a baby girl in February.
DIPG only affects about 300 children each year and is most commonly found in children under 10 years old, making Dana’s case extremely rare.
The disease has a less than one percent chance of survival and 90 percent of patients die within 18 months of diagnosis. No one has ever been cured of the disease.
Dana told Daily Mail Online that she and her family are still consulting with doctors to determine the best treatment in order to extend her life and stay alive – something that the teen from Pennsylvania said would be a Christmas miracle.
Dana Scatton, 17, was diagnosed with DIPG, an aggressive brain tumor, last week and has been given three to nine months to live
Dana, pictured with her boyfriend Tyler, 18, is seven months pregnant and due to give birth in February but doctors are planning to induce labor in three weeks due to her condition
Dana told Daily Mail Online that at the end of November she started to experience difficulty speaking and talking had become strenuous.
‘I noticed that it took me a little to swallow, then waking got harder and it was even hard to speak,’ Dana said.
She said things got worse in the beginning of December when she went to catch the bus to take her to school and her legs began to feel limp leaving her unable to walk properly.
At first the college student thought it could just be stress from the pregnancy and school.
‘I thought it could be the way the baby was sitting on nerves,’ she added.
Less than two weeks after her initial symptoms, Dana told her doctor what she was experiencing during a routine visit to check on the baby.
She was in the emergency room the next day where she underwent a cat scan and MRI that found a large tumor on the base of Dana’s brain.
Within hours of the MRI doctors delivered the news of the diagnosis to Dana and her mother Lenore, 51.
Dana said the first thing that went through her mind when she heard the diagnosis was: ‘Is my baby going to be okay?’
Her mother had a similar thought: ‘Am I going to lose my baby?’
The prognosis is grim.
Because Dana is pregnant, there has been hesitation to begin radiation that could prolong her life to nine months if started immediately.
But without treatment doctors have given her two to three months to live.
In this last week since the diagnosis, the family has been consulting doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and St Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
They are contemplating waiting another three weeks for the fetus to reach 31 weeks gestation before having a c-section to insure the health of the baby.
But with Dana’s symptoms progressing each day, the doctors do not recommend waiting any longer.
‘I can’t do as much for myself anymore, like not being able to put my pants on without probably falling,’ Dana said.
But she remains hopeful. ‘I’m not going to go by what they say, I’m expecting a miracle,’ she added.
The teen from Pennsylvania was in her first semester of community college. Now she is having difficulty speaking, swallowing and standing on her own
DIPG is a cancerous tumor that starts in the brain stem, the part of the brain just above the back of the neck and connected to the spine.
The tumor is inoperable and surgery to obtain a biopsy is unsafe due to its location.
The brain stem controls breathing, heart rate and the nerves and muscles that allow us to see, hear, walk, talk and eat.
Most diagnoses occur in patients between five and 10 years old.
It is unknown what causes the tumor and doctors do not believe the pregnancy had an impact on the diagnosis.
Symptoms of the tumor include lack of facial control, headaches, weakness, seizures, balance problems and ultimately death.
‘Sometimes it gets harder to talk and it is strenuous because my muscles and are always working,’ Dana said.
Radiation is the most common form of treatment to kill cancer cells and stop the tumors from growing.
The treatment provides a temporary cure to extend life, but does not fully rid the body of the disease.
The news of Dana’s diagnosis has been devastating to her and the family, according to Lenore.
She said: ‘We’re in kind of a daze. Your mind is going a mile a minute and it’s hard to absorb the things they tell you at the hospital.’
Both Lenore and Dana’s father Robert have taken time off of their jobs at Amazon and a YMCA to take care of their daughter full-time.
Dana is the youngest of seven kids between her mother and father.
The support from family and friends has been overwhelming and Lenore said that since Dana’s brother JJ took to Facebook and made a GoFundMe for medical expenses, people from around the world including Ukraine and Germany have reached out to send their prayers and support.
Dana and her boyfriend Tyler, 21, chose the name Aries for their daughter who will stay in Lenore’s care while Dana undergoes treatment.
Dana said: ‘I just want to be a wonderful mother.’
Lenore said she believes a miracle is in store for her daughter because her birth was already a miracle.
While Lenore was pregnant with twins she suffered a miscarriage of one of them and doctors told her Dana would be soon to follow.
But to everyone’s surprise she beat the odds.
Now the family is hoping that Dana can beat the odds once more.