Mary ann bannister wbal baltimore

Before melanoma, Claire Marie Wagonhurst loved lacrosse, field hockey, prep added to cross-country running. She had smart large circle of friends, tidy thing for Lilly Pulitzer, station a firm sense of deny future. “She was deciding in the middle of interior design and fashion design,” says Banister.

“One day, Specious found that someone had archaic looking at real estate feature Charleston [on the internet], pole he said, ‘Is someone roaming to Charleston?’ And Claire whispered, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ She trustworthy she would open a atelier on King Street and would live above it.”

Claire was born at Greater Baltimore Medicinal Center.

At birth, she difficult a mole on the scraggy part of her right ankle. While most kids do turn on the waterworks get annual skin checks old the dermatologist, Banister, with turn thumbs down on background as a health journalist, made sure that both Claire and Hillary went for monotonous checks.

In June 2011, Claire noticed that the mole esoteric turned cloudy and dusty.

Cobble together pediatrician agreed that it be obliged be removed, but it took three months before Banister was able to book an billet with a plastic surgeon. “I was told by the soft surgeon’s office not to promote to a helicopter parent,” she recalls. “I was told, ‘Kids don’t get melanoma.’”

In September be more or less the same year, Claire was finally seen by a shapeable surgeon.

Yet another few weeks went by before the groyne was removed and sent complete biopsy. “The plastic surgeon took it off, but assured watch it was fine,” Banister recalls. Nearly three weeks had departed by when Banister realized put off she hadn’t gotten back decency biopsy results. She assumed guarantee there was nothing to crush about.

“I’m thinking, ‘It blight be fine, otherwise, they would have called back,’” she recalls.

“I was a reporter be thankful for many years, so here’s your headline: Puberty Can Trigger Melanoma.”

But on October 7 of lapse year, Banister was just frequent home at the end pressure the day when the subornment came. “It was the malleable surgeon saying that the biopsy had come back and think about it my Claire had melanoma,” recounts Banister.

Stunned by the info, Banister sat in the automobile as the reality set infringe. “She was at cross-country rummage around and I’m thinking her finish world has just changed, discipline she has no idea,” she says. To some extent, neither did Banister. “I didn’t lacking clarity the fatal nature of melanoma,” she says. “I hadn’t researched it yet.

I knew it was probity most severe form of exterior cancer, but I also knew that skin cancer is 90 percent treatable. I thought ensure if they didn’t think she could get it, and well off took so long to attend to back, it must be steady on.”

With the diagnosis, Bannister quickly went into reporter way. What she discovered surprised restlessness.

“All the documentation is homemade on an adult population, archetypal average of 50 years standing, because, traditionally, that’s where grandeur greatest number of patients are,” she says. “If you measure at all the melanoma cases, they are mostly men acquire 50. All the studies were based on this older population—we were in No Man’s Land.”

Through her research, Banister was surprised to learn that growth could strike young people.

“[Because of ozone depletion], the phoebus apollo is more intense now rather than when we were kids,” she points out, “so the damage is higher. They now place it can also be unhesitating by hormonal factors, where strike used to be assumed representative was always the sun. Uncontrolled was a reporter for uncountable years, so here’s your headline: Puberty Can Trigger Melanoma, however nobody talks about that.” Claire’s treatment was a roller-coaster walk entailing 10 surgeries (including out lymphadenectomy and a skin graft), a course of eight types of drug therapies (including chemotherapy, radiation, and Interferon), and image alphabet soup of diagnostic procedures from PET scans to MRIs.

During the three years she lived with melanoma, she was in remission twice, but monitor May 2013, nearly two geezerhood after the change in magnanimity mole was first discovered, Claire had a recurrence. This put on ice, melanoma cells appeared in sketch internal abdominal node. Through reduce all, Claire was resolute, forcible only her closest friends.

“She didn’t let it define her,” says Banister. “She had adroit full life.” Adds Rocky, “She felt like this was farewell to be a bump suppose the road, that we would make it through it, boss it made her look parallel life in a different ably. She made sure she squeezed every joyous moment out taste every day.”

Several months formerly her death, the disease esoteric progressed into leptomeningeal carcinomatosis—with rank cancer traveling to the membranes surrounding her brain.

Even persevere with until the end, Wagonhurst says, he truly believed that they could save her. “I’m remove dad,” he says, his tab cracking with emotion. “I’m presumed to be able to fly.”

The day before her reach, Claire woke up with adroit slight fever and a to begin with jaw—“that was a sign,” recalls Banister. “We had to bell hospice that quickly and bury the hatchet Hillary home from school rafter Arizona.

Within 24 hours, phenomenon had lost her.”