‘Rose Girl’ Returns to Niños Incapacitados Clinic After Ardous Cancer Treatment

"The Rose Girl" and her parents, Melissa and Eusebio

Imagine enduring 12 weeks of chemotherapy treatments.

Imagine afterward enduring daily radiation treatments for 12 straight days – after surgeons removed one of your kidneys because the tumor wouldn’t let it go.

Imagine chemotherapy treatments continuing after surgery and radiation, two per month, for seven months – 14 treatments total.

Imagine you’re just a little 3-year-old girl. Imagine you’re her parents.

Melissa and Eusebio are her parents. They were told in April 2024 that their little girl, who developed an inflamed, swollen belly and was losing weight, had Stage 4 kidney cancer.

“We were devastated,” Eusebio recalled quietly, in Spanish.

“They said it was phase 4 – terminal.” Melissa remembered. “Her lungs were showing some dark spots, and the vena cava  (a vein which brings oxygen-depleted blood back to the heart) seemed to be infected, too.” Graciela Ducet of Niños Incapacitados translated their Spanish.

This all added up to high, unaffordable medical costs. The parents started by holding a neighborhood fundraiser – where an aunt told them Niños Incapacitatos helped pay for her own child’s medical bills.

The aunt approached Ducet, a Niños Incapacitados manager who helps run the charity’s Jocotepec clinic – and who quickly said the organization would be glad to help.

While another charity, Mi Gran Esperanza (My Great Hope) in Guadalajara, worked with the child’s physicians to cover the radiation therapy costs, Niños Incapacitados covered all other expenses, including medications, therapy and transportation. Ducet confirmed Niños Incapacitatos’ costs have totaled more than $88,000 MXN (pesos) as of mid-August. This child will remain in the organization’s program, and the family will get financial support for routine evaluations and tests she will have to undergo over the next five years to watch out for any cancer return.

“They (the child and parents) have been to hell and back,” Ducet said, “but the amazing thing is, this child bounces back every time. She is truly a miracle.”

It turned out the initial chemo treatments reduced the kidney tumor, known as a “Wills tumor” affecting mostly children under 5 years of age. The doctors were confident enough to proceed with the surgery but, unfortunately, they could not save the kidney. After the surgery, the scans showed some evidence of intrusion into the vena cava.

Radiation was then recommended immediately after the surgery to eliminate the residual growth in the cava and ensure the cancer did not recur, even though some adults cannot recover well after receiving chemo, then radiation. “This kid’s unbelievable,” Ducet said. Then another unbelievable event occurred.

Last month, the child walked into Niños Incapacitados’ monthly Jocotepec clinic with her mom and handed out single roses to all the volunteers, expressing gratitude for their help.

An attached card read, “Gracias a esta fundacion por estar en esta batalla conmigo” (“Thank you to this foundation for being in this battle with me.”) The child now had a new nickname: “The Rose Girl.”

“It wasn’t just financial assistance,” Ducet said. “We were all very personally invested, too. We wanted reports on everything they went through and extended emotional support to the family. Some of us became de facto godmothers.”

This included Lydia Bodin, Niños Incapacitados President, who regularly volunteers at the Jocotepec clinic with her husband, Michael Bustos.

“Roses have a certain poignancy in Mexico,” said Bodin, a breast cancer survivor herself. “Roses are connected to the miraculous, and I believe this girl is a bit of a miracle.”

To donate or for more information about Niños Incapacitados, go to www.programaninos.com/donate