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Fog/Mist Cancer-stricken girl gets help
Bellmore-Merrick community holds fundraiser for her family
Bellmore’s De La Mer Salon & Spa employees hustled to provide discounted nail and styling to nearly 200 guests from throughout the Bellmore-Merrick community who turned out Nov. 3 to help raise money for a little girl battling brain cancer.
The Merrick Moms group hosted the event.
Five-year-old Dakotah Maken, of Bellmore, was diagnosed with pilomyxoid astrocytoma in January. According to cancer.gov, PMA is mostly seen in children and occurs anywhere in the brain, but most often in the optic pathway.
Dakotah’s story
With a lollipop in her mouth and an empty salon to run around in, Dakotah laughed and entertained herself, sitting on the salon chairs at De La Mer during a recent interview. She looked through a bag of candy and picked one more lollipop.
“She’s a happy girl,” said her mother “She’s full of energy. She loves to dance. She loves to tumble. She’s just a ball of energy.”
Rene said that she and her husband try hard to make Dakotah feel as normal as possible. “She doesn’t get any special treatment from us,” she said. “She can’t stay up late, she has to eat her veggies. We treat her like we treat our other kids.”
Dakotah does get a free pass once in a while. “When she goes to chemo, it’s usually a very long and draining day for her,” Rene said. “I pull her out of school early sometimes when she’s very tired, and I let her watch more TV than usual. Those are the days she gets treated gently.”
The diagnosis
It all started with stomach pains.
“She cried. She said her tummy hurt, and I just had a gut feeling that I needed to get her checked out,” Rene said, tears slowly spilling out of her eyes.
“But how did you know that it was something serious, and not just a stomachache?” Esther DiDonna, De La Mer’s owner, asked. “My daughter used to tell me she had stomach pains when she was younger, but I never in a million years would’ve thought it would be cancer. How did you know?”
“You just know,” Rene said. “As a parent, you have a gut feeling, and you just know something is wrong.”
