Selena Granados wakes up from her afternoon nap wearing an orange Frenchy’s T-shirt and a vintage black wool hat. She walks from her mother’s bedroom to the living room couch to catch up on one of her favorite cartoons, InuYasha.

Eleven-year-old Selena looks exhausted, but while watching the popular Japanese cartoon she grabs her red Nintendo DS and starts to play.

A couple of minutes later, her fifth-grade teacher, Georgina Webb from Ginnings Elementary School, stops by to give her a bag of goodies since she missed her TAKS test.

Gary Payne

Selena Granados, 11, was diagnosed with an ovarian germ cell tumor this year. A group of volunteers recently decorated her room at her house in Denton using her favorite theme of paw prints.

“This is for you,” says her teacher, to which Selena replies by simply nodding to one side and continuing to play.

Selena has not been to school since Jan. 10 when she went to the emergency room for what her mother thought was stomach pain. Doctors operated on Selena that evening and discovered she had an ovarian germ cell tumor — a rare form of cancer found in children.

“Her back had been hurting the day before my mother passed away,” said Teresa Granados, Selena’s mother. She and her daughters traveled to South Carolina for her mother’s funeral in December.

“We thought she had pulled a muscle,” she said. “Two or three days later [back in Denton], her back quit hurting and she had a small fever. I touched her stomach and it was hard as a rock.”

Teresa took Selena to Denton Regional Medical Center at about 4 a.m. By 6:30 a.m., she was transferred to Children’s Medical Center Dallas to run tests and determine the cause of her pain. The doctors discovered Selena had a tumor, a mass about 7.5 centimeters by 19 centimeters, which covered her stomach. The same day, Selena underwent her first chemotherapy session.

“I started crying,” Teresa said about when she found out about her daughter’s illness. “I asked the doctors if they could fix my baby, and they said they would.”

Afterward the doctors went to Selena’s room to give her the news.

“She asked me if she was going to die,” Teresa said. “I said, ‘No, baby, the doctors are going to fix you.’ That night, I prayed to God not to take my baby.”

One step at a time

Every three weeks, Selena travels from Denton to Dallas for chemotherapy. Her mother said the first week of treatment was difficult.

“She would not eat, drink or sleep,” Teresa said. “But now she is eating more.”

Because her immune system is still weak, Selena is home-schooled. A teacher visits her for one hour, four days a week, for instruction.

Selena wakes up at 9:30 a.m., starts class at 10:20, and by 11 a.m. she is back to sleep.

During the day, she is under the care of volunteers, teachers and parents. People have found out about Selena’s condition through her school and church and want to help.

“They have done everything. We have people who go over and stay with Selena,” said Debi Lokey, principal at Ginnings Elementary.

“Teachers take out during their conference time. Families have donated clothing, food,” she said. “It has been heartwarming.”

Selena’s mother, a manager at a local RaceTrac, works from 5 a.m. until 3 p.m. When Teresa returns home, Selena is usually sleeping because she is so tired.

“Her body does not stay up like normal children; she is drained,” her mother said.

Selena’s twin sister, Rose, said kids at school ask daily when her sister will return.

“She played with the boys, had fun and would hang out with her friends, and she would just walk around,” said Rose about her sister’s activities before her illness.

Lokey said Selena and her sister are brilliant students.

Selena, who was named after the famous Tex-Mex singer, Selena Quintanilla, is the computer whiz. Her mother said she is shy, and her favorite school subject is science and she likes swimming. Rose likes soccer and track. They are both part of the school district’s Expo program for gifted and talented students.

Rose sits next to her mother, intending to ask her about something she had misplaced and trying to interrupt in her conversation.

“We are 49 seconds apart,” Rose reminds her mother, who then continues to say, “Though their birth certificate reads four.”

Selena walks from the kitchen and asks Rose to go watch InuYasha.

“She tried to make me watch a show right now, and she wants me to watch it with her every day,” Rose said. “I still think she is annoying.”

When asked if she was worried about her sister, she replied, “I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders and then said, softly, “Yeah.”

After Selena’s third chemotherapy treatment, her mother said Selena returned to Children’s because of dehydration. 

“My baby girl forced herself to do it [drink water],” Teresa said. “I think it was the first time she [Rose] got scared.” 

Selena’s cancer

Selena’s physician said her cancer is rare. So rare that it affects about 1 percent of the pediatric patients treated yearly at Children’s.

According to Dr. Tamara Slone, Selena was diagnosed with a stage II ovarian germ cell tumor because her tumor — which was found through a CT scan — had broken through her ovary, causing pain.

“There are some benign ovarian tumors, but Selena’s cancer is considered malignant,” Slone said.

Selena’s ovarian cancer is unlike that seen in older women. According to Slone, the type of cell that develops into cancer in older women looks different under the microscope and responds to a different type of chemotherapy.

Selena’s cancer is not associated with any type of exposure and is not preventable, and the chances of Rose acquiring the same type of cancer is nil.

Yet Slone believes Selena’s prognosis is good.

“It is important for parents to know that this form of cancer is curable,” she said. “In fact, for children, like Selena … 90 percent are cured with surgery and chemotherapy.”

Selena will continue to be watched for the first two years after her chemotherapy.

“We watch them closely, because it can rarely come back,” Slone said. “After the first two years off therapy, we monitor them for the long-term side effects of the therapy in our long-term follow-up clinic, the After the Cancer Experience clinic, at our hospital.”

Rallying support

On April 17, community members held a benefit spaghetti dinner for Selena.

Teresa, who is a single mother without health insurance, is doing everything she can to come up with money to cover the medical expenses, which now total about $200,000.

“As of yesterday, I had 13 separate bills,” she said.

Every time Teresa takes her daughter to the hospital, she is charged about $10,000 a visit, which does not include any blood work. At Children’s, Teresa signed up for a program at $29.99 a month, which she said has helped her negotiate and reduce the amount of the bills. One bill for $95,000 was reduced to about $34,000. 

She said the girls’ father, who lives in South Carolina, contributes through child support and helps with household expenses. Since Selena got sick, he has come to visit her only twice because of the high cost of travel.

“He came the first week and stayed a couple of days,” Teresa said.

To help Selena and her family, her principal, teachers and other community members sent a flier through the school district telling people about Selena and inviting them to the dinner. Andre “Frenchy” Rheault, known for placing community messages on his orange vans, joined in and reminded the community to attend the dinner at the school’s cafeteria.

“People did not even go to the dinner, they just came in and handed out $100 bills and gave us the money,” said Karen Fortune, a parent of a Ginnings Elementary student and one of the organizers of the benefit.

Parents and teachers from other schools brought envelopes with change collected from students and from restaurants such as Old West Cafe, which set up a contribution box at its Dallas Drive location.

“I am amazed at the outpouring of generosity from the district and the community,” Lokey said in an e-mail sent to the school district.

Dixie Smalley, the church secretary at First Christian Church, thought the same.

“We ran out of food three times,” said Smalley, remembering that organizers started running out of food at the benefit dinner 30 minutes after it started. “We had a parent go the store, another teacher was going, and I told them to buy whatever you can.”

Smalley, who lost a sister to breast cancer, said she was moved when she heard about Selena.

“It is heartbreaking because it could be anyone’s child,” she said. “I think the family needs a big miracle right now.” 

Lokey said the evening was crazy.

“The amount of support of the community was so overwhelming,” she said.

By evening’s end, about 850 people had attended the event, and $16,000 was raised and then deposited into the Selena Benefit account at DATCU.

During the dinner, Lokey read a letter from Selena’s mother in which she thanked the community for its generosity.

“When your child doesn’t feel good, listen to them. Don’t turn your ears the other way. You could be hurting your child more than you know,” Teresa wrote. “I hope no parents have to feel the pain that I had in my heart that day I was told. I hope no child has the fear in their eyes that my little girl had when the doctors told her what was wrong with her.”

Teresa said she had never seen her community work so hard. She also mentioned that during the dinner, it was the first time she had seen Selena smile in a long time.

“You have a community here that does not know me, but knows my little girl and they are helping her,” Teresa said. “I am so grateful.”

Selena’s wish

Last Saturday, a representative from the Make-a-Wish Foundation arrived at Selena’s home.

“You can go wherever you wish, even to see the president,” Teresa remembered telling her daughter about her wish. Selena, who had then wanted an Xbox  gaming system, settled for a trip to Florida.

Because the Denton community had embraced Selena, she had received a couple of wishes already. At the benefit, families approached Teresa and volunteered to fix up the girls’ rooms.

During this past week, volunteers redesigned Selena’s room with paw prints because Selena likes dogs. They painted her dresser black and the walls of her room a crisp white. They added black and white sheets trimmed in red. They painted Rose’s room and gave her an army theme.

On April 26, when she took her dog out, Selena lost her 1-year-old Shih-Tzu in front of her home. Her mother said Selena felt sad because she thought she was responsible.

“That dog was her partner,” Teresa said. “She is waiting for the dog to come back home.”

On Thursday, Selena returned to Children’s for her latest medical diagnosis.

“We have good news,” Teresa said Friday morning, on the phone from her job. “Everything is scanned, and there is nothing on her body.” 

She said she had been waiting to hear that for a long time.

“There was nothing there. My baby was so happy, you should have seen her. It was a relief for me to know that she will be OK,” she said.

Selena will continue her treatments, returning to Children’s monthly for the next six months. After that, she’ll continue to visit every six months until she reaches 18.

“I thank everyone every day for all of their prayers,” her mother said.

KARINA RAMÍREZ can be reached at 940-566-6878. Her e-mail address is kramirez@dentonrc.com.