Paige Suisted, from Kiwi, New Zealand, lived a quiet and happy life, working in a jewelry store and modeling. One day, everything changed. A sinister symptom in his right hand was the start of a horror health journey. She was later diagnosed with terminal brain cancer – and doctors were in shock from what they discovered.
In April 2024, Paige Suisted was living her “normal” life in Kiwi, New Zealand. However, one day, she suddenly felt something was different. Suddenly, her fingers on her right hand were starting to go numb. Shortly after, he arms and legs did too.
Speaking with Daily Mail Australia, Paige, who worked at a local jeweler and as a model, said she saw several doctors. They only confused her because they had different opinions about the cause of the numbness.
“My fingers kind of just stopped working,” Suisted said. “One said I had a stroke, but didn’t even admit me to the hospital. Another said I had Raynaud’s disease, and one just put me in a sling. They all told me something completely different.”
As doctors said different things and Paige didn’t get better, she became desperate for help. One day, she simply decided that enough was enough and called an ambulance. She begged to be admitted to a hospital so she could undergo proper testing.
Paige Suisted was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer
Luckily, hospital personnel listened. She went through MRIs, a brain biopsy, and CT scans, and doctors found the heartbreaking cause. Paige was diagnosed with stage-four astrocytoma, a terminal cancer often found in children.
The tumor in her brain was the size of a golf ball.
“When they told me, I think I screamed and cried,” she recalled. “It was so hard to hear. I have a younger brother and sister, and all I could think about was wanting to see them grow up.”
Doctors knew it was a fight against the clock. The tumor pushed nerves controlling her right side of the body aside, but it wasn’t a simple task to remove it. Experts agreed that a surgical removal was too risky.
“It was a 50–50 chance it would work, and a 50–50 chance I’d be fully paralyzed, most likely not able to talk or walk again,” Paige Suisted said. “So, we decided we weren’t doing that.”
Paige began treatment with radiation and chemotherapy straight away. The terminal diagnosis, she says, “broke a lot of us down,” and she thought she was “going to die.”
“At the start of chemo, it really shot me down. I wasn’t even aware of what was going on.”
Doctors were shocked when they saw her tumor-free brain
Paige documented her journey through treatment on Instagram. One day, she was to do a brain scan – and doctors were left in shock.
“In my last few scans, there’s been nothing there,” Paige told Daily Mail Australia. “This massive golf ball in my brain … we can’t see any of it on the MRIs.”
Doctors can’t declare her cancer-free without performing surgery, as they must confirm there aren’t any remaining cancer cells. They have deemed her a “medical anomaly.”
She continued, “They haven’t had a cancer patient like this,” she said of her doctors. “They don’t even understand it themselves.
Today, Paige is living her best life again. She has travelled to Europe and is celebrating her 27th birthday on top of the Eiffel Tower
“I just live my life every day now, and I want to help other people,” she said.
Let’s all share this article to give hope to those fighting cancer.
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