A girl, her love for horses and a rare diagnosis: How a Port Orange family is coping
PORT ORANGE — At 10 years old, Jenna Teachman has been in love with horses for more than half her life, but one of them now holds a special place in her heart.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Jenna was riding at a canter on Scarlett, a favorite retired thoroughbred at a horse camp in Samsula, when one of her feet came out of the stirrup. She fell off, rolled on the ground and broke her wrist.
A relatively minor mishap, the fall plunged the Teachman family into an unimaginable series of medical tests, procedures and evaluations that revealed the unthinkable:
Jenna has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
It’s an early diagnosis that might never have been made had Jenna — who had no symptoms of such a serious condition — not taken a fateful tumble off Scarlett that fall afternoon. That fact still boggles the mind of her mother and father, Kim and Matt Teachman.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Kim said, showing a favorite snapshot of Jenna at the stable, with Scarlett looking over her shoulders. “It just looks like Scarlett is watching over her. We’re all so grateful for Scarlett.”
The family also is grateful for an outpouring of support from the community that has raised more than $36,000 toward a $100,000 goal in a GoFundMe campaign. There are also other benefits that include a Feb. 23 event at Giuseppe's Steel City Pizza with a silent auction and a percentage of sales going toward helping with the family’s medical bills.
“Everyone has been amazing,” Kim said. “The things that people are doing for us are incredible.”
An extremely rare diagnosis
For the Teachmans, the holiday season was a stressful blur of appointments with pediatric oncologists, CT scans, PET scans, a biopsy and surgery to install a port in her chest for chemo therapy.
A little over a week ago, the family traveled to Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children for the first of two initial chemo sessions, a marathon 48-hour drip.
Following the second session, doctors will determine if the treatments have done enough to reduce tumors present in multiple spots on Jenna’s pancreas and behind her stomach to try to surgically remove them.
Among those cases, pancreatic carcinomas such as Jenna’s adenocarcinoma also are extremely rare, representing less than 5% of pediatric pancreatic tumors, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Statistically, malignant pancreatic tumors are virtually unheard of in children and adolescents, with an incidence of 0.46 cases per 1 million individuals younger than 30 years, according to the U.S. government’s National Cancer Institute.
“To see an adenocarcinoma that has metastasized in a child is exceedingly rare,” said Dr. Anderson Collier, division chief for pediatric hematology and oncology at Nemour’s Children’s Health in Jacksonville. “I’ve done this since 2001, for 23 years, and I’ve never seen one.”
Striving for normal: ‘We’ve just got to do it’
Despite the ever-present cloud of anxiety, the family has demonstrated a remarkably upbeat attitude, determined to maintain as much normalcy as possible.
Jenna received a day-pass from the hospital to celebrate her 10th birthday on Dec. 17, an occasion marked with a trip home for take-out sushi from a favorite restaurant and the chance to watch TV as the family’s favorite team, the Miami Dolphins, won big over the rival New York Jets.
The family also managed to make it home from the hospital for Christmas Day. Under the tree, two of Jenna’s favorite gifts, a welding kit and a pink-colored drill, reflected her aptitude for handyman projects, a trait inherited from her father.
A fourth-grade honor student at Sweetwater Elementary in Port Orange, Jenna gravitates to math, but her array of interests is extensive. At home, she loves to dabble in makeup, especially eye-catching red lipstick.
Over the summer, she taught herself to crochet, a skill she has used to craft pretty elbow pads to make her chemo sessions more comfortable. On a recent afternoon, she was at work on a crocheted tank top that will be easier than a T-shirt to wear during chemo.
“I can’t really comprehend it,” she said of her diagnosis, hazel eyes focused on the yarn looped around her fingers, “but we’ve just got to do it.”
Between Christmas and New Year’s, the family persuaded doctors to put treatment on hold briefly so the family could make a four-day camping trip to Savannah, a welcome respite before embarking on a stressful year.
“Jenna has cancer, but cancer doesn’t have Jenna,” her mom said, repeating a catchphrase that has become a family mantra.
Despite challenges ahead, ‘no way but up’
The challenges ahead have been easier to bear because of the outpouring of support from the community, reflected in an array of kindnesses big and small, Jenna’s parents said.
In addition to the GoFundMe campaign and the upcoming benefit event at Giuseppe’s, an armada of friends, neighbors and family have offered a steady stream of day-to-day assistance. Such gestures range from DoorDash gift cards to help with errands and other essentials.
On a recent afternoon, a nearby sandwich shop phoned the family with a welcome offer to deliver free submarine sandwiches for dinner. A few moments later, a neighbor from across the street arrived with a handmade quilt adorned with horses to keep Jenna warm during chemo treatments.
“It’s her and her horses,” said neighbor Robin Haire, who also crafted a tote bag for the quilt also decorated with a horse. “At least, she’ll have something warm, because it does get cold in there. You can also use the bag to take your iPad and stuff for your lips.”
Marveling at the thoughtful gesture, Jenna’s mom offered thanks for the gift.
“You see how people are just incredible?” she said. “Everybody’s been here to help us.”
Although there will be hard days ahead, the family is determined to stay upbeat, she said.
“There’s no other way but up, so we have to stay positive for her,” she said. “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Rare childhood pancreatic cancer diagnosis tests Port Orange family
