JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville girl is facing another battle with cancer after learning it returned after nearly a year of her being cancer free.
10-year-old Gianna has a positive attitude through it all.
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Her mother, Ashley Santora, says now her daughter and their family are facing a lot of uncertainty.
“I think in the back of every parent’s mind with a child with cancer is you do not want to think that it is going to come back,” Santora said. “That is why I think we were so blindsided this month because I did not expect her scans to say that.”
Gianna just graduated from 5th grade.
She is an honor roll student, loves the beach, art, makeup, lacrosse and ballet.
News4Jax first told about Gianna through back in December 2025.
In November 2024, Gianna was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which is bone cancer.
During medical treatment, Gianna had to get her right leg amputated a few months later.
Last summer, doctors said she was cancer free.
But just a few weeks ago, Gianna unfortunately learned her cancer came back in a different part of her body.
Santora says she is devastated because this was unexpected as it’s rare for that kind of cancer to return in a different bone even though there is always the possibility.
“We really did not think there would be anything on the scan,” she said about her daughter’s recent health revelation. “[Doctors] found two nodules in her lungs in her scan. Then she was complaining of shoulder pain literally the day after her scans were done.”
What happens next is Gianna and her family will be heading to New York City where Gianna has been accepted to be a part of an experimental trial for the next phase or her cancer treatment.
That is going to be at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in Manhattan.
“When you have a relapse and a reoccurrence, there is no standard treatment,” Santora said. “They basically told us that we have to find a trial and figure out what we were doing. It was kind of left in my hands to research and figure out where to go, what to do to help her and to save my baby.”
That initial visit to MSK is going to cost at least $7,000.
Santora says she is so grateful for the support and her daughter is extremely brave.
“[Gianna] knows that her cancer has come back,:” Santora said. “She has not complained. She enjoyed her graduation. She was finding the silver lining in going to New York to get treatment instead of being upset.”
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