NEW ORLEANS — Four-year-old Amelia Hindman is battling a rare form of brain cancer which doctors say is untreatable. She's only expected to live for another 18 months, and now Hindman's mother is spreading awareness about her diagnosis. Brittany Stevens sat down with WWL Louisiana's morning news anchor, Brheanna Boudreaux.
Stevens said Amelia is diagnosed with DIPG (Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma), a rare and terminal brain cancer that affects 300 children every year. Amelia's parents said they noticed a change in her balance and scheduled an appointment with her pediatrician on June 20. When Stevens dropped her off at school the day before the appointment, she later got a call that Amelia's balance was off.
"Her motor skills were slipping and her speech was starting to slur," she told Boudreaux. She picked her up from school and immediately brought her to the emergency room where a CAT scan showed that Amelia "had a mass in her brain". Amelia was then taken to Children's Hospital.
"When she got back from recovery and the neurosurgeon team walked in, immediately you could tell it was horrible news," Stevens said to Boudreaux. "Nobody was looking at us in the eyes, everyone was looking down and the room was very silent." At that moment, Steven's fiancé cut the tension and asked, "Is this terminal?" The reply they got was, "Well, it's not good.
It is inoperable and there is no treatment for it." That's when they learned about DIPG. "Which is in the brain stem, but more sp.