One Oklahoma girl's routine visit to the dentist turned into a life-saving event when the dentist noticed signs of a tumor that was days away from erupting, ABC News has learned.
"It was one slide down the basketball court from rupturing," mother Anna Woodard said of her athletic 11-year-old daughter Journee. "We were that close."
While cleaning Journee Woodard's teeth on Jan. 28, the dentist noticed the whites of her eyes were yellow. Woodard's mother said the hygienist suggested she take Journee to see a doctor, ABC News reported.
Mother and daughter saw a doctor the next week and after several tests, doctors found a grapefruit-sized mass on Journee's pancreas.
The tumor wasn't cancerous yet, but doctors said it could have ruptured without anyone knowing. If it happened in her sleep, Journee could have never woken up, her mother told ABC News. It also could have happened during one of the active basketball player's games.
Journee was admitted as a patient at the University of Oklahoma's Children's Hospital.
"I could tell Journee was getting nervous, especially when we checked into the hospital Thursday night," Anna Woodard said. "We assured her we weren't going to leave her side. And we stayed with her every night at the hospital from the time she was admitted until the time she was released."
The young patient was expected to undergo a three-hour operation called the "Whipple" procedure, a grueling, complex surgery commonly used to remove pancreatic cancers, according to the Mayo Clinic.
But after a 10-hour surgery, doctors removed the tumor and part of Journee's pancreas - as well as parts of her liver, stomach, small intestine and her entire gallbladder, Woodard told ABC News of the Feb. 6 procedure.
Journee spent a week recovering in the hospital and is now back home with her family in Edmond. Though life is still a little rough - she can't eat food yet and is getting nutrition through an IV - her mother says she is just as bright as ever.
"Journee is doing really well, exceptionally well," Woodard told the Washington Post.
Woodard also promised to never miss another dentist appointment and will keep the one she has "forever."
