Girl, 2, Brought to Childrens Hospital in Attempt to Save Her Eyesight

After two years of treatment in her native Mexico, toddler Gretel Arellanes had lost one eye to cancer, and a doctor told her mother there was little they could do to save the other.

Two-year-old Gretel has retinoblastoma, a rare cancer, and chemotherapy had proven unsuccessful at fighting the tumor in her second eye.

A few weeks ago, Dr. A. Linn Murphree, director of ocular oncology at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, received a call from Gretel’s doctor in Sonora, hoping Murphree could help.

Murphree knew what the stakes were. Each year, only about 300 cases of the cancer are diagnosed, and only a handful of centers have doctors who can treat it.

In the developed world, about 95% of children survive retinoblastoma. In developing countries, most children with the disease die, hospital officials said.

At the doctor’s urging, Gretel, her mother and a friend drove 12 hours from Sonora to Childrens Hospital, arriving Thursday in a last-ditch effort to save the child’s sight.

“We hurried over here,” Yolanda Arellanes said. “We came over here to see if anyone can help.”

Gretel’s father, a fisherman, stayed behind with her two older siblings.

Murphree has examined Gretel and is considering a higher dose of chemotherapy than she may have received in Mexico, he said. If that fails, radiation will be tried.

Doctors at the hospital have waived their fees, and the hospital is underwriting the treatment, but that still will leave Gretel’s parents with $30,000 in bills. And her husband’s earnings, Yolanda Arellanes said, are unpredictable.

“When there are fish, we have money to eat,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t.”

But her focus is on Gretel’s treatment.

“I’m very nervous,” she said. “I have so much tension in my body. We’re surviving and praying. Without God, there’s nothing.”