A 7-year-old girl battles a rare form of bone cancer

AUBURN – Curled in her grandmother’s chair, a white knit cap covering her small, bald head, Karen Nash ticks off a long list of wishes.

A lava lamp. Toys. A pair of doves. A white cat or, since her mom says no to the real thing, a FurReal kitten that’ll sit on her lap, purring on three AAA batteries.

They’re the typical Christmas longings of a 7-year-old wannabe veterinarian, even if Karen isn’t leading the typical 7-year-old’s life.

For the past six months she’s battled Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare childhood bone cancer. She’s missed a lot since her diagnosis in June, including vacation, summer swimming and half of second grade.

Two days after Christmas, that hospital cycle starts again. Because doctors recently found live cancer cells in fluid around her lungs, she’ll return for another round of chemotherapy. Soon after the New Year she starts radiation.

But Christmas, and its wrapping-paper-and-bows magic, is all hers.

“I want everything I don’t have,” she said.

The grown-ups in her life do too.

“A cure,” said her mother, Ruth Doughty. “I want a cure. Not just for us, but for everyone.”

Two years ago, soon after her parents’ divorce, Karen started feeling a pain in her side. It’s a bladder infection, doctors said. Then, a kidney infection. Gas. She must have hurt herself falling off her bike.

Until, one day last June, Karen had trouble breathing. Doctors found a baseball-sized tumor eating through her ribs.

They diagnosed Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer that most often affects children and teenagers. It’s so rare that only about 150 young people are diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

“I never would have thought I’d see my daughter in this position,” said Karen’s father, Fred Nash III, in tears.

Doctors removed two of Karen’s ribs and started her on chemotherapy. She rotated weeks on and off the powerful drugs, driving every day to Portland with her parents or grandparents. She endured daily shots and near-daily blood draws.

When Karen’s ordeal started, she screamed at all the needles. She barely winces anymore.

Her general pain is more “like a migraine,” she said. She sometimes feels blah.

But while the bright, playful Trinity Catholic School second-grader hasn’t been well enough to go to school, she’s well enough to pet her grandparents’ cats and watch her favorite TV shows on Animal Planet. She participated in a candy cane drive for a local charity. She’s planned her next trip to the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Portland.

“They’ve got a big playroom and the people there say it’s a place for kids, so the nurses can’t even go in there,” she said. “Next time I go I’m going to bring my squirt gun and squirt all the nurses and run to the playroom.”

Karen’s also written thank you cards to the people who sent gifts and prayers. And there have been a lot.

Friends and friends-of-friends have sent get-well cards. Her grandparents’ plumber helped the family find a new van when their old one broke down. Her father’s co-workers have even volunteered to donate bone marrow if Karen ever needs it.

Nash still can’t believe it.

“To say you’ll have an operation to give bone marrow, to me that’s hitting home,” he said.

The family hopes it won’t have to take the men up on that offer. For now they’re living one day at a time.

The next big day is Christmas. Karen will be home to celebrate.

“You couldn’t ask for better,” her father said.