‘I’ll Live to Be 90’ : Brain Cancer Patient, 18, Meets Her Birth Mother

Janine Malone, stricken with cancer, got her wish and met the mother who gave her up for adoption at birth 18 years ago and said she now has two moms.

Biological mother and daughter met in a tearful scene at Tampa International Airport Sunday night when Donna Hufnagel and her other children arrived from Medford, N.Y.

Janine Malone was waiting in her wheelchair when her birth mother walked through the door and gave her a big hug.

Her adoptive mother, Sarah Malone, stood by, rubbing her daughter’s back.

“They’re both my moms; it’s confusing,” Janine Malone said.

The young woman suffers from a malignant brain tumor and has undergone three operations, the latest in June, and must undergo chemotherapy treatment every four weeks.

‘I Never Denied Her’

She told reporters that she is sick but added, “I’m not dying. I’ll live to be 90, not 19.”

Hufnagel, 38, now a single parent, gave up her daughter for adoption before later deciding to marry the baby’s father. The couple later had three more children.

The only time she had seen her daughter before Sunday night was at the hospital through a window at the nursery.

“I thought she would come to my house one day and knock on the door like on television,” Hufnagel said. “I always thought of her. I never denied her.”

Sarah Malone, 43, lived in Brentwood, N.Y., and adopted the girl when she was 10 months old, later moving to Florida after a divorce.

“She’s talked about it, and I never held it from her,” Sarah Malone said. “And I told her if she wanted me to help find her mother, I’d help her.”

Janine Malone found and met Hufnagel through the efforts of A Child’s Wish Come True Inc., a nonprofit organization that specializes in granting wishes to children with life-threatening diseases.