AUSTIN, TEXAS — From the rolling plains of the Texas Hill Country — a region to which throngs descend from the big cities of Austin and San Antonio that surround it to pose amid fields of bluebonnets that sprout each spring — comes what’s being called a miracle: A little girl’s inoperable tumor is gone, and doctors have no explanation.
It’s a story that’s making the rounds across the rest of Texas and beyond, and it’s enough to make even the most skeptical wonder about the nature of life. There, Roxli Doss was forced to suspend her favorite activity of horseback riding after being diagnosed in June with a cancerous brain tumor called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a malignancy out of reach from even the most skilled surgeon’s hands.
Among the condition’s nefarious effects are decreased ability to swallow, vision loss, decreased speech and, eventually, difficulty breathing. In Roxli’s case, the growth was pushing against her spinal cord. Debilitating headaches were a daily side effect of the condition.
“It is very rare, but when we see it, it is a devastating disease,” Virginia Harrod, a doctor with Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, explained to USA Today. To battle the growth, the 11-year-old girl underwent weeks of radiation to mitigate the malignancy although it has no cure.
The family staged a benefit to defray medicals costs in August, their spirits buoyed by the outpouring of support from the close-knit community in the Texas Hill Country. Still, they prayed for a miracle.
“And we got it,” the girl’s mother, Gena Doss, told the newspaper. “Praise God we did.”
How the growth disappeared is a mystery, something even doctors are unable to explain. “When I first saw Roxli’s MRI scan, it was actually unbelievable,” Harrod said, as quoted by USA Today. “The tumor is undetectable on the MRI scan, which is really unusual.”
Roxli’s mother is convinced the hand of providence gave a divine assist: “Everyday we still say it,” she said. “It’s kind of our family thing that God healed Roxli.”
Doctors continue to monitor the girl’s scans, and medical treatment centered on immunotherapy continue as a precaution. But the tumor’s disappearance days before Christmas is firmly in the realm of the inexplicable.
The girl’s family has set up a GoFundMe for help with medical bills. At last check, $27,520 of a $50,000 goal has been raised. And Roxli — carefree and full of life once more — is back to riding her horse, Silver, along the rolling fields amid the bucolic Texas Hill Country, having regained those simple joys of childhood.
>>> Read the full story at USA Today
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Photo of Roxli Doss with her favorite horse via GoFundMe, a Patch promotional partner.
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