Loteria Mia: Locals rally around toddler with cancer

Friends organize Mexican bingo fundraiser

If you want to go: Saturday, 5:30 p.m. at Port Isabel Firemen’s Hall

By DINA ARÉVALO
Port Isabel-South Padre Press
editor@portisabelsouthpadre.com

“She is just a strong little girl.”

Those are the words Liana Zamora used to describe her 2-going-on-3 year old daughter, Mia Valdez. The toddler — the younger of Zamora’s two children, has been battling a spinal cancer since last year, Zamora said.

“She was diagnosed about a year ago,” Zamora said of Mia’s sacrococcygeal tumor, a malignant growth at the bottom of the young girl’s spine. Mia has undergone treatment since it was first discovered at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Since then, she has gone into remission — and relapsed — twice. Currently, Mia is again undergoing inpatient treatment at the hospital for what is a third round of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation.

It all began last year when Zamora noticed her daughter was having trouble going to the bathroom. “That summer I was taking her to the doctor constantly because she was having issues using the restroom,” Zamora said.

So, she did what any mother would do: she took her little girl to the doctor — several times. But local doctors offered no answers, even after Zamora began to notice physical changes to her daughter’s backside.

It wasn’t until a visit to Mia’s father in Houston that the family finally found some answers. Mia’s dad noticed a ball-like shape had formed at the bottom of her back, where her tailbone ends. Doctors at Texas Children’s knew right away that something was wrong. “As soon as they took her into the hospital they knew right away that it was a tumor,” Zamora said.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.portisabelsouthpadre.com/2018/09/21/loteria-mia-locals-rally-around-toddler-with-cancer/

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