Arizona Burns sat in her garage on Saturday bundled up in blankets, dressed as a Fortnite character, as hundreds of friends, family and community members from around the St. Albert area showed off their Halloween costumes and left treats for her and the food bank.
Arizona was given six months to live after doctors diagnosed the nine-year-old with a terminal brain tumor. Her mother, Sharice Cardinal, wanted her to have a special Halloween, as she is immunocompromised and unable to get out.
“I reached out just to get a few kids to come by during the day so she gets to sit in the garage and enjoy Halloween a bit. And it just took off,” Cardinal said.
The street outside the family's Morinville home was lined with people in costumes: dinosaurs, Pikachus and princesses were all there to wish Arizona a happy Halloween and to show the family support.
Arizona requested people who came for the parade bring donations for the Morinville Food Bank. The family was able to donate almost a full truck box of food.
Cardinal said Arizona had “the best Halloween ever.”
The diagnosis
Arizona was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive grade four tumor, earlier this month. Initially, the doctors thought she had stomach problems – she was vomiting daily, exhausted and rapidly losing weight.
“She was very sick for a few months in the summer,” said Cardinal. “She went through a lot of testing and stuff to try to figure out what was going on.”
Bloodwork was done and everything came back normal. She was sent to the Stollery Children’s Hospital for more non-invasive testing and that came back normal too.
“I took her back to the Stollery 10 days after our first visit, and kind of said, ‘We can't leave till we figure out what's wrong. She's not well,’” said Cardinal.
The on-call pediatrician ordered a CT scan which showed the tumor. He ordered an emergency MRI and five days later Arizona was scheduled for surgery to remove most of the tumor.
“They knew that they would not be able to take it all out,” explained Cardinal. The tumor was located near Arizona’s brain stem.
“I kind of knew what we (were) facing after the surgery, just by the look on the doctor's face. You just get that gut feeling,” she said. “They see it all the time. Like they know what they see, right? But they can't officially give you a diagnosis without pathology results."
It was a week before Cardinal got the results back.
Cardinal decided she wasn’t going to subject Arizona to any treatments that would cause her to suffer any more than she already has.
“There's not really much that they can do to help her,” said Cardinal. “If she were to get radiation or chemo, it would only prolong her life maybe a month or two. But it would also make her very, very sick. I don't want her to feel that way – you know what I mean? I want her to be happy and comfortable and feel her best.”
The family has a trip planned for mid-November to see the ocean and the Grand Canyon.
“We’re driving. We're going to rent two big Suburbans and just go on a long trip with our family,” she said.
“We're just going to sightsee and have picnics and have fun.”
Celebrity wishes
On Friday, Arizona's battle drew attention from actor Ryan Reynolds, who sent her a video message saing he had heard a lot about her story and was thinking about her.
“The reason that your story got all the way over to me, out here in New York, is because you are surrounded by people that are immensely in love with you and there is probably no greater gift in this world than to be surrounded people like that,” Reynolds said in the video message.Cardinal said they are feeling love and support from everywhere, not just from their former community of Alexander First Nation, but also from the surrounding communities.
“I want her to just enjoy the rest of her life that she has here. Maybe it’s six months. Maybe it's longer. We don't know,” said Cardinal. “But I just want to make the best of it for her and surround her with love and happiness. And that's exactly what's been going (on).”
A GoFundMe page has also been set up for Arizona and her family.
