When volleyball star Addison Rowan felt an unusual lump in her chest at age 11, her doctors dismissed it as a sign of puberty.
Over the next five years, that pea-sized mass grew to about the size of a ping-pong ball, at which point it was referred for testing.
Addison was assured that it was “not a big concern” and that she had a less than one in 100 chance of having breast cancer due to her age and lack of family history.
That’s when they discovered it was not breast cancer, but an ultra-rare cancerous tumor that, if not detected in time, kills four out of 10 children.
Volleyball star Addison Rowan (seen here) was just 16 years old when she was diagnosed with a rare form of soft tissue cancer called alveolar soft tissue sarcoma.
Rowan’s cancer spread to surrounding tissues in her breast and around her ribs, although doctors were able to remove it completely with surgery.
The North Carolina teen was diagnosed with alveolar soft tissue sarcoma in September 2021, when he was 16 years old.
It forms in the soft tissue that forms between fat, muscles, and nerves. It only affects about 80 Americans a year.
It usually starts in the arms of the legs. Doctors believe Ms Rowan is only the second reported case of ASPS forming in the breast, with the previous case being in an older woman.
The high school student learned of her diagnosis after returning home to find her parents crying.
Mrs Rowan, now 19, said People: ‘I immediately started going crazy. I was frozen. I probably didn’t talk for 20 minutes. “I was so surprised.”
Mrs. Rowan was immediately scheduled for surgery. That same week, her volleyball hosted a sold-out game to help support her.
She said, “It was probably the best game of volleyball I ever played in my entire life.” I was just trying to give it my all because I literally didn’t know if I would ever be able to play again.
“My whole team rallied around me and dedicated the game to me.”
The team won the game.
Rowan told People that her body is “back to normal” three years after her diagnosis and that she can now play club volleyball on campus.
Ms. Rowan is now a college sophomore majoring in biology and hopes to study oncology or pathology to “learn more and help people.”
Three days later, during a six-hour surgery, doctors discovered that Rowan’s cancer had spread to the surrounding tissue of her breast and around her ribs.
Surgeons took skin tissue from her back to reconstruct her breast and were forced to collapse one of her lungs and remove a rib.
Rowan said: “When I woke up I was in a lot of pain. I didn’t even know there was such intense pain.
“I was so scared because I had never felt that kind of pain before. I literally kept asking my parents. I was like, ‘Am I going to be okay?’ “Will I make it?”
Soft tissue sarcomas account for only one in 100 cancers in the US, and ASPS cases account for only one in 500 of them.
If the cancer has not spread, the survival rate after five years is just over 90 percent. Even in cases where the disease has spread, children have a 60 percent survival rate.
Doctors were able to remove all of Ms. Rowan’s cancer and this month, the college sophomore celebrates her third cancer-free anniversary.
She said: I learned that I was definitely stronger than I thought. I brought out the strongest version of myself. “That’s what helped me beat the odds.”
She can even play volleyball on her university’s club now that her body is “pretty much back to normal.” “Honestly, I feel stronger than before,” he said.
Rowan is majoring in biology and hopes to study oncology or pathology to “learn more and help people.”
She said: “No matter what the odds are, how rare the condition you have, at the end of the day, you are in control of your history and your future.”
‘When you feel like everything is against you, don’t let that defeat you and define you. You can work hard and change your future.’