Laurel Bares's parents thought they were in the clear when she was checked out of the hospital, having endured 40 consecutive days of cancer treatment.
Then on June 12 they got bad news - the one-year-old's neuroblastoma had relapsed and spread throughout her body.
Laurel, from Plymouth, Massachusetts, was first diagnosed with the disease on March 10, just six days after her first birthday.
At her first pediatrician checkup on March 6, her parents mentioned that their daughter seemed ill, irritated, and distant. The doctor did a physical exam and said everything was fine, it was nothing to worry about.
Uncertain, they took her for a second opinion.
There, doctors felt a lump the size of a softball in the side of her abdomen. Days later, tests revealed she had stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nerves which has just a 40 percent risk of surviving five years.
Laurel's parents thought they were nearing the end of her treatment when she was checked out of the hospital after a consecutive 40 days of receiving cancer treatment. Then they got bad news - the one-year-old's neuroblastoma had relapsed and spread throughout her body
DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT: HOW DOCTORS DISMISSED HER PARENTS CONCERNS AND A HUGE LUMP ON HER HIP
Neuroblastoma is a type of cancer that occurs when a very early form of nerve cells don't mature properly during development and become cancerous.
It occurs most often in infants and young children; nearly all people with the disease are diagnosed before their fifth birthday.
Just over every one in three cases of neuroblastoma start at the adrenal gland, as in Laurel's case. Adrenal glands produce a variety of hormones and are found just above the kidneys.
Laurel was taken in for her one year checkup on Monday, March 6, just two days after her first birthday party.
Doctors gave her a standard full evaluation and noticed that though her height was normal, her weight had dropped into the 22nd percentile for her age.
'I breast fed her until she was nearly seven months old,' her mother Leah told Daily Mail Online. 'Until then, she was in the 60th percentile for her age, so I felt like this was a really big deal.'
The pediatrician then did a physical examination, and when they went to feel Laurel's right side she started squirming uncomfortably.