LEAH STRONG

Leah Herrera is an 8 year old girl with a personality like no other. She is extremely outgoing, silly, can light up a room and can make everyone feel like they are her best friend. She has a loving family, with two older sisters, her fun mom, cool dad and 3 fur siblings!

Last March, Leah started showing signs of hand tremors and issues with her eyesight at school. Leah’s mom, Jennifer, took her for an MRI at the recommendation of Leah’s Pediatrician and it showed 3 masses in Leah’s brain. No one could ever have prepared for the news the family was about to receive. After a surgical biopsy, Leah was diagnosed with a grade 3 Anaplastic Astrocytoma on June 10, 2020. This is an extremely rare and aggressive cancerous tumor, especially for any child. Due to the part of her brain where the tumor was located, surgery was not an option. Her treatment started almost instantly, including a combination of intense radiation therapy (or as we call it ✨SUPERPOWERS✨) 5 days a week for 6 weeks and multiple rounds of chemotherapy.

Luckily with everything shut down due to Covid, Leah was able to continue going to school from home even while being in treatment. She was balancing her regular childhood with the battle of her life.

There was a rollercoaster of emotions, there were good days and bad. But all adding up to one thing, Leah being cured and getting back to her “bitches be trippin” self. Never once did Leah look at herself as a kid that was sick, she kept her mind and heart open to the world in the way she has all along. Being the strongest person anyone has ever seen. Stronger than any tumor, any treatment and any cancer.

Leah had finally started showing signs of improvement, living the life that her family wanted her to have all along while fighting this disease. She was smiling, dancing, laughing, all things that can easily be taken for granted. But in Leah’s case, they were gifts like no other and for her family, it was the positive signs that they needed.

Fast forward only 6 months later, Leah began to show limpness in her left leg. She began to struggle to walk and move around, regressing from the progress she was beginning to make. Another MRI revealed one more tumor in Leah’s brain. Leah became part of a new immunotherapy clinical trial offered at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. The doctors said things would get worse before they got better with this treatment, but her family and Leah never gave up hope. She kept receiving this new immunotherapy treatment along with yet another round of radiation therapy and more chemotherapy. She began showing many side effects. After waiting the 6 months to let the swelling go down in Leah’s brain from all the treatments, her life made a complete 180 in the worst way possible.

Leah has not been able to eat or move on her own for the past 3 months. She is unable to talk, smile, or even keep her eyes open most days. But everyone knows she’s fighting from the inside out, to heal, to feel like herself, and to tell everyone “I did it!”. If you’ve made it this far in Leah’s incredible story, I want to say thank you.

Leah’s family has just received the unimaginable words that Leah’s treatment is no longer working and the cancer continues to grow in her brain. With no other treatment or option left, all we can do is hope, pray, and keep only the most positive and healing thoughts in mind for Leah and her family. Although she is now only an 8 year old girl, she has touched so many lives to last a lifetime.

After finding out this devastating news, both of Leah’s parents have decided to stay home full time and dedicate all of their time to her. Staying by Leah’s side every single day, helping her, feeding her, and keeping her spirits up even when theirs are down. Her mom has become a doctor herself, and her sisters and dad have been her rock through it all.

If you read this with an open and heavy heart, I hope that we can give Leah and her family the recognition they deserve. By sharing this post, whether virtually or by word of mouth, you are keeping Leah and her spirit strong as well as her story. If there is anything you can give financially, whether $1 or $100, it is both unexpected and appreciated by her family that has been selflessly giving themselves and the best treatment possible to their little girl.

Leah loves unicorns, and her family’s hope is that the outcome of sharing her story will be the magic she needs and deserves through your prayers, well wishes, positive thoughts.