Childhood cancer started as swollen face for Ziyanna Houston

Jacksonville — Rhabdomyosarcoma is a rare type of cancer that affects muscle tissue, normally in children, but that wasn’t the first diagnosis when Ziyanna Houston’s face started swelling up while she was out of town with her God mother for the summer.

“We took her to Memorial, which is in Miami, and they told her that she had a sty,” says Carol Houston, Ziyanna’s mother. “Then two weeks later it wasn’t getting any smaller so we took her back.”

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At that point they took a biopsy, and when they returned to Jacksonville found out it was cancer.

“I really didn’t know what it was,” says Carol. “They gave me this big book to read kind of read up on it but not read too much into it.”

She says the news was hard to take for the whole family, but the treatment got started pretty quick. The doctors explained the process so and the fight to beat cancer got underway.

“When I found out that I had cancer it was sad, but then I got used to it,” Ziyanna says.

She says sometimes the chemotherapy took a lot our of her, but the staff helped make things a little bit better.

“They’re very nice,” Ziyanna says. “All of them are nice.”

Ziyanna says when she first started coming in for treatments she was really nervous. Then she got used to it, and the nerves went away.

Her mom says the Child Cancer Fund was an unbelievable help when times got tough. Carol says they hit a rough patch where she had to stop working as a manager at McDonald’s because Ziyanna was going through so much treatment.

“They reached out to me and wanted to know how they could help me and my family,” Carol says. “They gave us food gift cards to kind of help us with grocery. They paid my rent and my lights a couple times.”

She says before they started the journey she had no idea there was so much help out there for families going through such a huge crisis.

“It kind of takes a big relief off of you,” Carol says.

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