Community supports 12-year-old cancer patient who beat the unbeatable [Video]

HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) — Emerson Hoogendoorn’s loved ones say she can be described in many words: kind, strong, giving. But the word that stuck out the most to her mom was brave.

“She is the bravest, strongest, fiercest human you will ever meet,” Ami Hoogendoorn, Emerson’s mother, said.

Emerson, 12, of the Holland area, celebrated her last session of chemotherapy in March. It was her second battle with brain cancer. She was first diagnosed with a rare type of cancer called diffuse midline glioma when she was in kindergarten. After years as part of a clinical trial at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, her mom said everything was going well and it looked like she had beaten the cancer last year.

She did, but doctors found another tumor in her brain, this time it was a different kind of brain cancer called radiation-induced high-grade glioma.

“She had already beat the unbeatable cancer and …