Help The Cook Family during Sienna's Rare Cancer Journey.

Hi, my name is Rachel, and I'm creating this fundraising page on behalf of my cousin Shawnee and her husband Brayden Cook for their 3-year-old daughter Sienna, also known as ‘Sissy’, who has been diagnosed with Metastatic Melanoma.

During a family trip to Bali in June 2023, Shawnee noticed what appeared to be an innocent mosquito bite on Sissy’s arm.

Upon returning home, this “bite” didn’t go away and came increasingly sore when bumped & would bleed. She sought medical advice every week for four weeks from the family GP. Despite being told it was possibly just a staph infection and were given scripts for different creams and antibiotics, Shawnee demanded a referral to a dermatologist.

By October 2023, Shawnee finally got an appointment with a dermatologist, who performed a scraping to send off to Pathology for testing. Results came back two weeks later, showing it as an adult melanoma but not classified as such due to her age. She remembers very vividly the words “it presents as an adult Melanoma under the microscope, but because she’s a young child it’s not”. However, because of the presence of a lot of atypical cells, they were concerned and recommended surgical removal, but deemed as non-urgent at this stage.

In late November, they received a referral to a private plastic surgeon, who was unable to see Sissy until January 15, 2024 due to the Christmas holidays. The surgeon told them it was “benign and normal for children to have these”, offering surgery for $6k with a possible short wait or have surgery through Public Health at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in 2-3 weeks. They chose the latter option as they were under the assumption that this was “benign”.

Finally getting an initial appointment at the Queensland Children’s Hospital, Sienna was urgently scheduled for surgery to have the lesion removed the next day on February 20, 2024.

Sissy has undergone four surgeries, a PET scan revealing the spread to lymph nodes. After a failed sentinel lymph node biopsy, a fine needle aspiration confirmed the presence of cancer cells.

She then had a full axillary lymph node dissection and wider excision from the original lesion area on her arm.

Whilst they have received exceptional treatment from the QCH, given this type of Melanoma is such a rare occurrence in children this age all statistics and research are based on Adult cases to date which is making a treatment plan harder for their medical team.

Given this they have reached out to leading Paediatric Melanoma Specialists from the US to assist their Doctors, as any parent would - trying anything to help their little girl.

Immunotherapy works extremely well in treating adult melanoma cases as studies show but as Sienna is a 3 year old child this comes with high risks. Immunotherapy may also cause the immune system to attack healthy cells, leaving Sissy with life long side effects and further health problems ie Hepatitis, Type 1 Diabetes, thyroid issues and Heart Disease/Failure to name a few.

Adding to their challenges, four weeks ago, Shawnee noticed a spot similar to Sienna’s on her 5-year-old brother Byron. After hospital consultation, they decided to remove it for testing this Wednesday.

The Cook family needs our help. Shawnee had to close her business, and Brayden is increasingly taking time away from his Air Conditioning business to attend and support his family. Their precious 3-year-old daughter is battling a disease no child should face, and bills are mounting. With travel, hospital parking, meals, they need our support.

They also would like to create awareness and advocate for future Paediatric Melanoma cases & help assist in research.