“I didn’t think it was going to be a tumor.”

In just 12 short days, Mallie Royer’s life changed forever. Something just wasn’t right Aug. 10. While at driving school, she couldn’t shake the double vision appearing along with the recurring headaches she had experienced for months.
After a week of thinking it was a prescription problem with her contacts, she and her mom decided it was time to see the eye doctor. When pictures of her eye revealed a shadow behind her left eye, her eye doctor advised her to visit the ER where a CAT scan revealed a tumor on her right frontal lobe the size of a golf ball. She was admitted to Children’s Hospital the night of Aug.16. Over the course of five days, Mallie met with her neurosurgeon, went to surgery to have her tumor removed, had a full MRI and then Mallie found out she had stage IV Glioblastoma brain cancer.
Stacie Lanter, Mallie’s mom, said it was very difficult to drive to the ER as it was so unexpected. She had to have a friend take her because she was so worried.
“It’s very scary,” Stacie said. “God does mysterious things. I think as parents you never expect to have [cancer happen] to your own child. You hear about it but you just think ‘Well that just couldn’t happen.’ And then, it does.”
When Preston Royer, Mallie’s father, got the call that Mallie had cancer, he said he felt numb.
“My baby girl has cancer,” Preston said. “I can’t put it in words. It’s hard to understand. It’s so surreal because it’s here. It’s now. It’s everyday.”

Glioma is a type of tumor that forms in the glial cells of the brain. The tumors are diagnosed depending on the aggression of the tumor, grade I being the slowest growing and grade IV being              Adaline Bray  the most aggressive and malignant.
“It’s such a rarity in children that there are not a lot of doctors that specialize in it, so the doctors that do specialize in it work together all over the country,” Stacie said. “She’ll have a good team working with her.”
Mallie said her friends have been especially supportive to help her stay positive. According to Mallie, her closest friend, Hannah Scheidl, sophomore, helps keep her spirits up. Hannah clearly recalls the day she found out Mallie had cancer.
“I just felt like I had a giant boulder dropped on me,” Hannah said. “My best friend [has] cancer. The day before we were just having fun, talking and watching TV and then the day after [I] find out that she [has] something on her brain. I was just so scared at that point and it made me realize anybody could have this. I could’ve had this and it was scary. Really scary.”
Mallie will have radiation five days a week for six weeks, which began Sept. 17. Along with radiation, Mallie takes six chemo pills every night for six weeks. After radiation and her first round of chemo are finished, she will have 2-3 weeks of rest and then she will begin her next round of chemo seven days a week for six weeks. She will go through a total of eight cycles of chemotherapy that will last about a year.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how [her] body responds,” Stacie said. “We’ve just got to build her strength back up.”
Mallie experienced a negative stretch of time when it set in what she was facing. Chemo and radiation on top of the cancer made Mallie tired and annoyed and the reality of her condition dawned on her.
“I really just don’t even want to do treatment because we waited a month to start all the treatment and for my incision to heal, and I was just tired all the time and weak and had no strength,” Mallie said. “That’s what the radiation and chemo will do as well so it’s adding more of that on and so I just didn’t want to do anything.”
Stacie said her emotions mirror Mallie’s. They are constantly rising and falling, varying with each day.
“[My emotions] are like a roller coaster,” Stacie said. “When she’s up, I’m up and when she’s down, I’m down. When she went through this negative phase we met with the doctors and the psychologists and they said now is the time to fight because [she has] the best chance of a cure now. We don’t want it to come back so I think that definitely helped and hopefully made [Mallie] ready to fight some more.”
For Mallie, social media has played a huge supporting role. When she showed her mom the words of encouragement tweeted with #Malliestrong, she said her mom began to cry. The hashtag was started when Michael Wade, associate principal, responded to Mallie after she informed him of her trip to the hospital.
“I like it because it shows that people are actually really caring,” Mallie said. “Five years from now I can say there was a hashtag ‘Malliestrong’ about when I had brain cancer.”
While Mallie is absent from school, she will be in the program Homebound which makes up for the schooling she has missed. Hannah said Mallie’s absence from school is very noticeable, and it is hard for her to continue classes and activities without thinking of Mallie.
“I just feel empty,” Hannah said. “She was the one that made jokes and laughed at everyone and she was our center of everything. You always have that one friend that has that goofy personality and she’s the one that creates all of the happy feelings. Even if [I] had a terrible day at school [I would] laugh because that’s how she is. And now we just sit there and it’s just not the same at all. Not at all.”
Stacie said even though Mallie has been in a negative stretch, it is important to continue to fight when she has the strength.
“We had the attitude of taking one day at a time and tried to stay positive [and we are] just [trying to] keep Mallie strong,” Stacie said.
Hannah agrees that even though there is an uphill battle to be fought, she has faith her friend will emerge a winner.
“I have so much hope in her and I believe that she can beat cancer,” Hannah said. “I know she can do it. She is strong.”