As a child, Elana Simon suffered for years from crippling stomach pain. Yet despite trips to multiple specialists, her pain remained a mystery.
“Nothing seemed to be explaining why I was having these problems,” Elana told NBC News’ Ann Curry.
Then, at age 12, Elana’s bright future hit a terrifying hurdle when she was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. Her parents knew nothing would be the same. “The moment that I heard those three words, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, were life changing,” said her mother, Rachael Migler.
What they didn’t know was just how their lives would be changed — that Elana would not only recover from the cancer, but embark on a journey of scientific discovery that would lead her as a New York high school student to make a discovery so cutting-edge it was published in a major science journal.
Read the full, original story: Teen Makes Genetic Discovery of Her Own Rare Cancer