At five years old, Traviana Dunston has cultivated a deep love and appreciation for music and dance. She’s an entertainer at heart: full of energy and light. Right now, Traviana loves LOL dolls and hopes to one day travel to Disney World. Unfortunately, Traviana is fighting something that nobody should ever have to go through: a battle with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a rare and severe tumor that forms in the brainstem.
Jerry Askin of Click Orlando reports that Traviana’s mother Pamela first noticed that something was wrong when her daughter began limping around the house. As more and more worrying symptoms appeared, Pamela took her daughter to the doctor for tests. Four months ago, the family received the test results.
DIPG has no cure and it can be markedly difficult to treat. Some doctors may engage chemotherapy or radiation to stop the tumor from growing. Surgery is rarely used because of the difficulty in reaching the tumor. Even with these interventions, most children with this cancer only survive for 9-12 months after diagnosis. When Traviana was diagnosed, the doctors told Pamela that she most likely had about six months to live.
But Pamela is not going to give up. As she shares on her GoFundMe page, which you can click to donate:
Traviana doesn’t understand nor realize what’s going on as she wakes up daily with a huge smile on her face, but of course, it is so devastating for her mother to sit by her side every single day and be told there is nothing that can be done. We’re asking for help finding a specialist that specializes in DIPG as well as funding to get help with medical bills and getting more clinical resources on DIPG.
About Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG)
One of the things that Pamela hopes to do by sharing her story is encourage other parents to know the signs of DIPG. By knowing how the disease looks and manifests, families could identify what is going on in earlier stages—and seek out potential interventions or even inclusion in clinical studies.
Diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas are serious and highly aggressive tumors that grow from glial cells. These tumors form on the brain stem which controls bodily processes like heart rate, breathing, or the nerves and muscles that help us perform daily tasks, see, eat, and walk. Approximately 300 children in the United States are diagnosed with DIPG each year. Doctors theorize that DIPG formation is linked to brain development, which is why these tumors typically occur between the ages of 5 and 10.
Symptoms may appear rapidly in the weeks and months leading up to diagnosis. These may include:
- Nausea and vomiting
- Weakness in the arms and legs (often on one side of the body)
- Difficulty chewing and swallowing
- A headache that occurs in the morning or gets better after vomiting
- Sudden difficulty controlling speech and facial expressions
- Problems with balance and walking
- Double or blurred vision
- Drooping eyelids
- Uncontrolled eye movements
