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ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — Jazmyn Dream Zeller, 15, has had many experiences that most teens have not.
She's watched the ball drop at Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve, thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and gone backstage to meet the actors in the Broadway musical "Chicago." She's been to Disney World in Florida, courtesy of a group called the Sunshine Kids.
And she's had cancer. Six times.
In November, Jazmyn and her family learned why she has spent so much of her life in surgery and chemotherapy. She has a genetic disorder called biallelic mismatch repair deficiency that makes her unable to fight new cancer cells that form in her body, reported The News-Review (http://bit.ly/2avCCta).
"So basically she has no brakes," her mother, Heather Doyle, explained. "It's very rare. She's one of about 200 people in the world that have it."
The first time she developed cancer, Jazmyn was 22 months old. She had been walking for about six months at that time, and suddenly she couldn't do it anymore.
"In a matter of about five days, she went from being able to walk to having to hold herself up to barely being able to crawl to not being able to move her legs," Doyle said.
Jazmyn's regular doctor was out of town. They saw another, who suggested her shoes might be too tight. That wasn't it. A couple days later, their regular doctor returned and sent them immediately up to Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland. They thought it might be an infection. It turned out to be something much, much worse. Jazmyn had a tumor behind her lungs that had developed "arms" that were wrapped around her spinal cord. The cancer was paralyzing her.
She had two surgeries and nine months of chemotherapy. Because the top part of the vertebrae had to be removed, she developed scoliosis, a curvature of her spine that forced her to wear braces throughout elementary school.
"I don't have a lot of fond memories of elementary school," Jazmyn said. "It was hard. I couldn't do a lot of things that other kids could do. I couldn't run in the brace. I couldn't bend down. I couldn't tie my shoes. I couldn't sit on the carpet."
The other kids didn't "get it," so it was hard to make friends, she said.
The doctors wanted to wait until she hit puberty before performing surgery on her back. By 2012, her spine was contorted into an 82 degree curve.
She had the surgery at Shriners Hospital in Portland. Beforehand, she had eight weeks of traction, with a "halo" screwed into her head and attached to about 40 pounds of weight. (She weighed just 80 pounds at the time.) Then she had surgery to fuse her spine.
During that year, there were already signs that another problem was developing. She'd been having some rectal bleeding. The next year, her doctors found hundreds of polyps in her colon. She was diagnosed with colon cancer. Her colon and appendix were removed, and for six months she had an ostomy bag to carry her waste.
As her mother described her long history of ailments, Jazmyn interjected with jokes. She's witty and irreverent. Her dark humor is her way of coping with all that's happened to her.
She named the ostomy bag "Lily Iliostomy," and joked she was rather fond of Lily because she didn't have to get off the couch to go to the bathroom during that time.
Things were quiet for about a year. Then, in 2014, Jazmyn started having blood in her urine. A stent was placed in her ureter — the tube that connected her kidney to her bladder. That turned out to be the wrong approach. The real problem was, yet again, cancer. This time it was transitional cell carcinoma of the ureter.
She's the youngest person ever to have been diagnosed with that, her mother said.
"Old people get it, just like old people get colon cancer," Jazmyn said. "I get all the old people stuff."
She had surgery to remove the kidney, the ureter and a small part of her bladder. With just one kidney, she has to be cautious. She has to stay well hydrated always and avoid ibuprofen and caffeine. If she lives to be 21 (something her doctors say is unlikely) she will not be able to have a drink to celebrate the occasion.
She would later develop tumors in her bladder, and in her liver, both of which survived the chemotherapy for the ureter tumor.
"My tumors," she joked, "are survivors just like I am."
Finally, she began routine testing to uncover other tumors. In January this year, an MRI turned up a brain tumor. A craniotomy was performed and a large portion of her left frontal lobe was cut off. They followed up with six weeks of daily radiation.
She lost much of the front portion of her hair.
"I have an old man bald spot, " she said. "I'm actually trying to grow out my bangs so I can literally do a comb over. That's why I'm growing my hair out. I'm only 16 and I have to have a comb over, and I'm a woman."
She'll soon begin another round of chemotherapy with a new drug.
Despite the suffering she endures, and the peril she faces — at any time a tumor may arise somewhere else in her body — the tone of Jazmyn's words remains lighthearted, as if she's doing a comedy routine. She covers her bald spot with a brightly colored beanie.
"When it gets too serious I don't like that. I use jokes to make it light," Jazmyn said.
But just under the surface lies a very grim reality.
Oncologists generally give their patients a five-year prognosis — a percentage representing the likelihood that they will be alive in five years. Jazmyn's prognosis is slim to none.
"It's been kind of a grieving process," Doyle said. "Pretty much since last year I think we've both been grieving along the way. If she wasn't so high spirited and optimistic, and such a fighter, it would be nearly impossible."
Jazmyn, she said, is a rock.
"She handles it better than most adults would," Doyle said.
Now, Doyle's main concern is to keep her daughter alive and as happy and healthy as possible.
"Really her happiness and her comfort is my biggest responsibility," she said.
Jazmyn turned 16 on July 28, and hoped to have a party, a girl's day with maybe a visit to a spa, a facial, a manicure, shopping, dinner and a movie. Her mother, worried about how she could pay the bill for that along with the family's other expenses, created a GoFundMe page at www.gofundme.com/2fgkaths. Donations can also be made at any Banner Bank branch in Jazmyn's name.
"I'm excited for my birthday because that's the one day that I get to be celebrated as a person and not celebrated as a disease. Everybody gets a birthday. It's a normal person thing," Jazmyn said prior to turning 16 years old.
Most of all, Jazmyn doesn't want to be known as just "the girl with cancer."
She's more than that. She's a girl who enjoys writing fiction and loves cats. She was an honor student before her illness forced her to leave her studies at Roseburg High School, and 2014 Youth of the Year at the Boys and Girls Club of the Umpqua Valley.
If she defies the doctors' expectations about her lifespan, she'd like to travel, to see the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza, the Colosseum in Rome.
Other than that, though, she hasn't thought too much about the future.
"I try not to think ahead too far," Jazmyn said. "I try to just think about what's happening this week."
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Information from: The News-Review, http://www.nrtoday.com
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