“I can’t wait,” Abby, 11, shouted as she walked into the room where she would record her first song.
Abby, who is battling two brain tumors, is the first patient from the S. Lee King Center for Proton Therapy at Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis to work with Kids Rock Cancer — a partnership that has been a long time coming, writes senior music therapist Tracie Sandheinrich.
Prior to her diagnosis earlier this year, Abby was experiencing severe headaches, dry mouth and constant lethargy.
“The pain felt like a hammer smashing down on a rock and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball, like a cat, and go to sleep,” Abby says.
Abby wrote her song, “Broke Through,” to celebrate the end of her treatment, which is coming very soon. She received four rounds of chemotherapy and five weeks of intense treatment at the proton center and wrote about her experiences through it all.
Writes Tracie: “This session was sort of a celebration of the end of her treatment — she’s almost done. She talked about the scary and difficult parts, but more importantly, she talked about how, with the support of her loving family and friends, she has ‘broke through’ and continues to sing through each day with so much strength.”