Cierrah French, the 13-year-old Skowhegan girl who underwent surgery April 23 at Boston Children’s Hospital for a rare form of cancer in her right leg, is back home and recovering after a tough couple of weeks.

“She’s home, and actually today is the first day she wanted to go visit at school,” her grandmother and guardian, Alecia Blodgett, said Monday. “We had a pretty good day yesterday. She was able, in the wheelchair, to get out in the sun. She slept pretty good last night. It was the first night she hasn’t gotten me up. It (the pain) seems to be worse at night.”

Cierrah has chrondocarcinoma, a cancer that is resistant to both chemotherapy and radiation. It ravaged her right knee, which surgeons replaced as part of the several-hour operation April 23. Part of her tibia was removed also, but her grandfather, Blodgett’s husband Wayne, reported soon after the surgery that doctors were able to remove the entire tumor.

Cierrah was released from the hospital April 27 and turned 13 on April 29, though her birthday was a hard day, according to her grandmother.

“That was probably the worst day she had pain and she was up all night, but she was able to celebrate the day before,” Blodgett said.

She said the outpouring from Cierrah’s school, Skowhegan Area Middle School, as well as the community and even strangers has been heartwarming.

“The kindness is just overwhelming. Everybody’s been so nice — the school, the community, everyone. She says, ‘Oh, Mammy, I feel awful — everyone’s giving me stuff.’ I said, ‘Honey, it’s just ’cause they care.’ She’s the generous one, usually, so she doesn’t know how to receive. She’s so appreciative. She tells me all the time. We just love her to death.”

The general manager of Books-A-Million in South Portland sent books to Cierrah at the hospital, as she is a fan of young adult fantasy novels, and he had read about her situation in a Morning Sentinel column. A voracious reader, Cierrah said before her operation that she longed to go to the store, which she had seen many times from her grandparents’ car as they traveled to and from Boston Children’s Hospital.

“She loved the books that Books-A-Million sent her and the one the Rev. Tanner and his wife brought,” Blodgett said, referring to Mark Tanner, pastor of the Federated Church in Skowhegan, and his wife Deb.

“She’s just a reading fool again,” Blodgett said affectionately.

Cierrah, a straight-A, high honors student, is scheduled to see her surgeon on May 16, and eventually, she will be able to return to school for half days. Though, when that will be is uncertain, according to her grandmother. She is able to get around inside the house with a walker and crutches but uses a wheelchair when she gets tired or goes outside, she said.

“She can put 50 percent of her weight on it. She just can’t bend it,” she said of Cierrah’s leg.

Cierrah was diagnosed with chrondocarcinoma in 2018 and first started noticing pain in her leg in 2017, according to her grandparents. Before the surgery, managing the pain was difficult, and she is slowly improving, according to her grandmother.

“She is definitely gaining,” she said.

Related Stories