Parents: Billy and Stephoney P.

  Featured: June 2007

Angel is a typical little girl who loves stuffed animals, the Disney channel, and playing games.  She wants to be an artist and loves watching movies.  Angel has epilepsy and failure to thrive syndrome, in addition to cancer. 

Angel's mom remembers well how their journey with cancer began:

One day while giving her a bath, I noticed a bump on her side. I rushed her to the local ER. Thank God my family were visiting, this was when I needed them the

After an ultrasound of her stomach, we became very worried when the small room we were in became so crowded by what seemed like every
Doctor there. I will never forget what they said to us. We were told that it was a mass or tumor and more likely than not it was cancer. My heart sank.

I had seen things like this on TV; and, oh, how I cried with all those suffering parents. I remember thinking to myself, "How can this happen to me or my family?"   I ran from the room sobbing; the pain was so overwhelming.

I fell into my dad's lap like I was a child, just wanting to make sense of what I had heard. We were told to admit her at Children's Hospital that night.  I
remember thinking how just 15 months earlier my husband and I had left our home as a couple then came home as a family. I thought, "God, I can never leave as a family and return to my old life as a couple."

 My baby girl was my whole world. She was admitted that night
and surgery was performed two days later on June 12, 2003, to remove the large tumor that was invading her tiny body. The surgery was supposed to take around 12 hours. We received a call a few hours into it,
telling us she was bleeding out. The next time I saw her she had many tubes and so many machines I never could have prepared myself to see that.

In the PICU that night we were told that the tumor was called Clear Cell Sarcoma -- a very rare but deadly form of cancer. She was stage 4
when we found it. She was in the PICU for about two
weeks.  We were told the blood loss had caused her to suffer multiple strokes which left her paralyzed on her right side. I didn't care as long
as she was here with me.  She was released from the hospital
five and a half weeks later. We started the chemotherapy and were then vein feeding her because she was unable to walk, talk, or eat on her own.

After weeks of radiation and months of chemotherapy  we were ready to do the surgery the second time. Thank God!  Tthe second one was a success.  The kidney, the tumor, and a piece of her diaphragm were
removed. She was sitting up the following day and walking within three days.

She now is a very happy five year old. We have been working on her speech because she has so much trouble trying to say more than a few
words at a time.

For email and snail mail addresses, personal web site URL, medical fund information, and a current list of interests and hobbies, visit our "Kids List" page.

For CURRENT UPDATES on Angel, visit our updates page.