Danielle Chestnut is a regular eleven-year-old fifth-grader who likes SpongeBob SquarePants, cheerleading, playing softball, performing gymnastics, going hunting and fishing and hanging out with her best friend Amelia.

But in November of 2006, Danielle’s world turned upside down. Her parents had noticed that she had slept propped up on pillows for a week, but Danielle insisted that nothing was wrong. She didn’t want to complain to her parents that she was having difficulty breathing.

Then, on Nov. 2, Danielle’s parents, Judy and Rick Chestnut, rushed her from her home in Holly Pond to the hospital because she said she couldn’t breathe.

The doctors began working on Danielle immediately. At first, they suspected she had pneumonia. But after her tests came back, doctors shattered the Chestnut family with the news that Danielle had cancer — non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer that attacks a person’s immune system.

According to the National Cancer Institute’s website, the cancer usually starts out in the lymph system, which is a part of the immune system. Since lymph tissue is found throughout the body, childhood non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma can begin in almost any part of the body. The cancer can spread to the liver and many other organs and tissues.

Danielle was taken to the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, where doctors confirmed that a tumor was sitting in the top part of one of her lungs and was causing her to be short of breath. The cancer was also in the bone marrow in her hips.

Danielle was hospitalized from Nov. 2-17 while doctors ran tests and gave her medicine. They determined that the tumor in her lung was two and half inches long.

She immediately underwent chemotherapy to try to shrink the tumor. After three weeks of chemo, Danielle’s tumor shrunk to one inch in length. However, it is still currently this size and has not continued to shrink. Doctors constantly have to change the dose of her medicines to try and shrink her tumor even more.

Once Danielle’s tumor is gone, she will still have to undergo chemotherapy to eradicate the cancer in her bone marrow. She will have to keep seeing her doctor for check-ups and tests until she is in college.

Danielle’s medicine is injected into her port — a device implanted into her left shoulder that disperses the chemotherapy throughout her body.

“I wanted it on my left side so when I started to feel better, I could still hunt,” she said.

She currently sees the doctor once a week to have her blood drawn and tested, have medication injected into her spine, and to have her chemotherapy treatments. It often takes all day for this routine.

“They have to put her to sleep when they put the treatment into her spine. Before each visit, Danielle can’t have anything to eat or drink for 24 hours prior, so after her spine treatment, the nurse will usually go get her something to eat. She likes to watch SpongeBob SquarePants while she’s eating. Then she gets her chemo treatment after all that,” her mother, Judy, said.

“We call it (chemotherapy) Kool-Aid because it’s red like Kool-Aid,” Danielle said. After the chemotherapy, she usually sleeps the entire next day because the medicine drains her of energy and because her body must rebuild its white cell count after each chemotherapy treatment, which depletes the body of these cells.

“Danielle’s biggest problem with all of this has been losing her hair. She’s very self-conscious now without it. She had such beautiful, long, blonde hair,” Judy said.

But it’s also been very difficult for Danielle to not see her friends or teachers from school. Since being diagnosed with cancer, she has been home-schooled so she can take her weekly treatments and recuperation time without taking away from her schooling.

“I miss my teachers and friends at school. I miss my teacher, Mrs. (Susan) Rainey,” Danielle said.

However, her friends and teachers constantly think of Danielle. They even helped to raise funds to buy her a horse for Christmas, which she always wanted.

“It was so kind of them to do that. Danielle always wanted a horse and that was just the sweetest thing of them to pitch in to buy her one. That meant the world to us,” Danielle’s parents said.

Regardless of their daughter’s illness, Judy and Rick strive to make every day a happy one for Danielle.

“She’s our miracle baby. I had my tubes tied when I was 21. I had the procedure reversed so we could have Danielle. It took us four years to get pregnant with her and I was 38 years old when it finally happened. She’s such a special, little girl,” Judy said.

The Holly Pond school’s PTO will be sponsoring a spaghetti dinner benefit for Danielle today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Holly Pond Lunchroom. Plates are $5 each and come with a salad, fresh bread and a delicious dessert. Carryout plates are also available.

This is the first benefit that’s been held for Danielle. Cancer is a disease that costs a family not only emotionally and physically, but financially as well. The community is encouraged to attend this event and show their support for Danielle and her family.

“Everybody’s been so good to us. We’re truly blessed to be a part of this community and we just want to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts,” the family said.