NBCPhiladelphia.com

For the second time in her young life, Maya Rigler of Bryn Mawr, Montgomery County has developed cancer, only this time the diagnosis is a very rare form of the disease.  Ten-year-old Maya was recently told she has atypical Ewing's sarcoma, a tumor on her pancreas.

"I describe it as a bunch of sad cells coming together in a group, " Maya said. "They're just like Mr. Sad Cell and they form a weird blob and then you just take the blob out and you shrink it."

Doctors can't operate because the tumor is as big as an orange and sits on critical blood vessels, said Dr. Julie Stern of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"You can't take it out without damaging 12 other organs that are sitting around it," said Stern. The goal is to try first to shrink the mass with chemotherapy, and then remove it.

Maya is up for the fight — having already beat Wilms tumor, a form of kidney cancer at the age of two. She, and her parents who are rabbis at two area synagogues, have their unwavering faith behind them.

>>Read More