Girl, 8, is diagnosed with rare form of breast cancer

An 8-year girl in Utah learned earlier this month she has a rare form of breast cancer — a shocking discovery local doctors reportedly said is the youngest such diagnosis they’ve ever seen.

It’s rare enough for a girl of Chrissy Turner’s age to have breast cancer at all. But worse yet, she has one of the rarest forms of the disease: Secretory breast carcinoma, which accounts for less than 1% of all breast cancer cases, according to ABC Utah.

 

She discovered the disease after finding a lump in her chest in early November, her mother said.

“She came to us on a Sunday afternoon, she said, ‘Mommy I have been scared and I have this lump,’ ” Annette Turner told the station in the family’s Centerville home.

“It had been there for a while.”

At first, the family couldn’t believe it.

“I was in shock,” Annette said.

But she said cancer runs in the family —she survived cervical cancer and her husband was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma — and now it’s the adults’ turn to help their little girl beat the disease.

“No child should have to go through cancer,” Annette said.

Chrissy is now set to undergo a simple mastectomy, her family said. They started a GoFundMe page seeking $100,000 in donations to help with medical costs.

Secretory breast carcinoma, in its rare occurrences, was initially described as “juvenile” breast cancer because of its association with children —but even so, most cases are actually found in adults, according to a 2011 study in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.