EDITOR’S NOTE: This collection of personal essays was developed in collaboration with the Global Health Reporting Center, with support from the Pulitzer Center.
Sabina McMahon was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, when she was 12 years old. After chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to remove the affected leg bone, she was cancer-free for more than a year, but the cancer ultimately spread to her lungs, the first of five relapses.
Especially when it happens to younger patients, cancer affects the whole family. Sabina’s father, mother and younger brother, Charlie, who live in Portland, Oregon, have struggled to maintain a semblance of normal life even as they travel across the country seeking the best care for Sabina.
Late this spring, she enrolled in a clinical trial in Cleveland but had to drop out almost immediately in order to undergo chemotherapy to shrink aggressive tumors in her lungs. Now 17, Sabina is currently being treated at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where her family has moved to be with her.
Sabina’s health struggles have not stopped her from enjoying life as a high school student - she’s preparing for her senior year - or from a budding career as a singer-songwriter who just completed her first full-length album. She has also become a public advocate for the importance of pediatric cancer research, which currently receives just 4 cents of every dollar in federal research spending and is often overlooked by drug companies.
