Their Daughter's Prognosis Was Dire. Then, the Tumor Just Vanished

An 'extraordinarily rare' turn of events for 11-year-old Roxli Doss
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 19, 2018 9:07 AM CST
Their Daughter's Prognosis Was Dire. Then, the Tumor Just Vanished
Excellent news for little Roxli Doss.   (Getty Images/AgFang)

A Texas girl's parents were told she had an inoperable brain tumor, and the odds looked bad—a survival rate beyond five years of less than 1%. Consider Roxli Doss an odds-beater. In what the 11-year-old's doctor tells CBS News and HuffPost is an "unbelievable" and "extraordinarily rare" development, the latest MRI for Roxli, who was given just months to live and underwent radiation treatment simply to keep her alive as long as possible, revealed her brain tumor has vanished. "She is just as active as she ever was," dad Scott Doss tells KVUE-TV. He's astounded at his daughter's turnaround since her June diagnosis of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, after complaining of headaches, double vision, and nausea. "It is very rare, but when we see it, it is a devastating disease," says Dr. Virginia Harrod, Roxli's doctor at Austin's Dell Children's Medical Center.

Roxli's DIPG diagnosis was pretty definite: Her father notes that nearly half a dozen different medical teams had confirmed it. She started radiation treatment, not to attempt to cure her cancer but to prolong her life, and a GoFundMe was set up to help the family pay for Roxli's medical bills (it has amassed nearly $30,000 as of Wednesday morning). Doss and his wife, Gena, say they prayed for a miracle the entire time their daughter was going through her treatment. "We got it," Gena Doss says. "Praise God, we did," adds her husband. After the mind-boggling tumor disappearance, doctors did a double-check on Roxli's scans to make sure they hadn't missed anything. Doctors say there's a chance the tumor could return, so Roxli will keep receiving certain treatments, such as immunotherapy, to keep her as healthy as possible. (What this doctor did when his own son got a rare brain tumor.)

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