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A little girl from the UK traveled all the way to Oklahoma for proton beam therapy after a cancerous tumor in her cheekbone was mistaken for a bug bite.
Emma Payton was just 8 years old when her parents first discovered the small lump on her cheek during a family vacation in Egypt.
“We didn't think anything of it. She said she had had it for ages and it didn't hurt, so we weren't overly concerned. It was just like an insect bite,” Emma’s mom, Tracey Payton, said, The Daily Mail reported. “You couldn't really see it but it was rock hard, like a pebble, the way that swollen insect bites can sometimes be. It was about the size of a marble. I just thought she'd been bitten in the night.”
It wasn’t until the family’s physician recommended an MRI scan that they finally found out the truth about that little lump.
Emma actually had rhabdomyosarcoma, an extremely rare soft-tissue cancer, wrapped around her cheekbone.
After undergoing emergency surgery and chemotherapy, Emma was forced to travel to Oklahoma for proton beam therapy.
The life-saving treatment, which more accurately pinpoints and kills deadly tumors, is not available in the UK.
After 23 sessions of the therapy and two final rounds of chemotherapy, Emma, now 10, was finally declared in remission.
Although she must have scans every four months to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned, Emma is now back in school and finally enjoying her life cancer-free.
