DoctorOz: An 8-Year-Old's Breast Cancer Story & Hope for Cutting Cancer Risk

When I first heard about the bravery of eight-year-old Chrissy Turner, I immediately wanted to meet her and her amazing parents. She's the youngest person to have undergone a medical procedure of its kind. This little girl is a real fighter, and she's an inspiration to us all. It's a story making headlines around the world. A startling medical case that's gone viral and has everyone talking. An eight-year-old girl diagnosed with breast cancer. In October, after Chrissy Turner pointed out a lump in her chest to her mother, she was immediately taken to the doctor. The family was stunned when a biopsy revealed secretory breast carcinoma, an extremely rare and slow-growing form of breast cancer that affects only one in a million. Breast cancer is almost unheard of in children, making this third-grader's case even more exceptional. In early December, Chrissy underwent a single mastectomy. Now her family and the world wait, watch, and hope this courageous eight-year-old can go back to the business of being a kid. Chrissy's parents, Annette and Troy, are here. Thank you very much for being here. Chrissy's going to come out in a few minutes, but I want to start off with the two of you. Take me back to the moment you first heard that Chrissy had breast cancer. Devastation. Total collapse. Disbelief. Fear. Absolutely. It was terrifying. I mean, your whole world flashes before your eyes, you know, or rather stops, stands still, and you just realize that, you know, things are never going to be the same. So how did you tell your beautiful eight-year-old daughter that she has breast cancer? That was the toughest thing. The look on her face was like she'd seen a ghost. And the only cancer that she'd ever dealt with is she lost her grandfather to leukemia and daddy lost all his hair. She was only one years old when he was diagnosed. So for her, she just has really, you know, bad memories of cancer, obviously. So the good news is, a couple weeks ago, Chrissy underwent a mastectomy on her right side. The surgery went well. And the other good news is that young, beautiful patients like your daughter have 100% survival rate, pretty much. Which is so fabulous, although she had to go through a lot to get there. So, y'all want to meet Chrissy? Come on out. Chrissy, come join us. How are you feeling? Are you feeling okay? Yeah. That was a little bit of a scary surgery, wasn't it? Yeah. I tell you, I love your earrings, I love your blouse. Can I see those a little better? So, what's your favorite thing you do in school? Um, probably art and just hanging out with my friends. Art and hanging out with your friends. That may never change, by the way, for the rest of your life. So, if I understand correctly, your big sister Brianna's been a little helpful, pretty cool about all this. Yeah. Do you see her over there? What are your biggest supporters? Um, probably my family. Was it good to have her around? Yeah. You get to play with her toys now? Yeah. Yeah. You get to wear her clothes once in a while? Yeah, she did give me a few shirts. Oops. What's these balloons you've been playing with? What are they about? Well, I got a gift just hanging, well, tied onto my doorknob, so we decided to write messages on our balloons, and I wrote some of my favorite things on them. What kinds of favorite things did you write in the balloons? So, I write, I wrote one message and then I wrote like, Velociraptor, balloons. Velociraptor? Yeah. Make you be deadly, you know. But you're not scared by Velociraptors, you just beat cancer. Is that right? Yeah. What's left? All right. So, I want to ask you, If you want to say something to all the folks out there who are wondering how you stayed so brave in the face of all this. I just looked up to God and my family and just hung on. And I spent time and just kept my mind off of it. You know what you said that's so beautiful and so true? You just hung on. People just came. All you got to do is hang on and people will come. Hope you never forget that. And thanks for sharing your wonderful wisdom with us. Listen, I got a little something for you. Now, I want you, if you don't mind, I know you like drawing stuff. So I didn't pick all these out myself, but this is what my kids would have wanted at your age. So you can pick anyone you want. I'm kidding. Get the whole thing. Thank you for being here. Cruising story has touched so many of us. And more than 1,500 people have already donated to help our family with medical expenses. Be part of the cause. Head to Christie's GoFundMe account. Thank you all very much. I'm Edward Choi. Good luck to you. We'll be right back. Thank you. Today's show is all about cutting it in half, but can you cut your cancer risk in half? The answer may surprise you. Many cancers are linked to lifestyle, which is within your control. Now, you all know the obvious changes you need to make, right? You know about the sun exposure, too much of that, and making sure your weight's the right weight, and forget those cigarettes. But in addition to these, there are simple things you can do today to reduce your risk of cancer tomorrow. World-renowned surgical oncologist, Dr. Christy Funk is here. Now, you may know her. As the surgeon who did Angelina Jolie's procedures or operations. How are you? I'm great. How are you? So I just told everyone that I thought we could cut down our cancer risk quite dramatically. I know how to do that. How are you going to do it? Well, you know, everybody wants that magical super berry that they just pop that and cancer doesn't have a chance. But unfortunately, it takes a daily deliberate choice. You want to infuse known cancer-fighting compounds into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it's that compound effect of all these working together that don't give cancer a chance. So we're going to give everyone three tips. The first one, the way you're going to cut your cancer risk has to do with vitamin D and your breakfast. Why are folks so excited about this? And what's the actual tip? Okay, so vitamin D is like this sexy newcomer, even though it's been around, well, since we were born, but it's the sunshine vitamin, and it is important for everyone to listen up because over 40% of Americans are vitamin D deficient, and if you could optimize and harness the power in vitamin D, adding to your breakfast things like portobello mushroom and eggs, the D's in the yolk, so eat that, you literally can cut over 16 different types types of cancer including well-known Pancreas, breast, ovary, prostate, lung, and skin. Vitamin D. All right. The next way to cut your cancer is now, for a lot of you guys, if you're especially glass half full kind of people, is that half full or half empty, guys? What do you think? Hard to tell. With cancer, it's scary no matter what. So you've got a way of finishing out the glass. Yes, you've got to power up that water with green tea. So I love green tea, honestly, truly. The evidence is so strong about green tea and cutting cancer risk, particularly breast cancer risk, I know, can be cut in half by... Three cups of green tea a day. All right. The final rule, the number one rule, is a food rule around cancer. It has to do with anti-inflammatory foods. So what foods do we have to actually incorporate into our diets besides the chickens of the world? Right. So lean meats are good, but you want to eat things that spring up naturally out of the ground. Green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale, you top that with some peppers and tomatoes and anti-inflammatory walnuts and basically all of those toxins and free radicals in your body don't stand a chance against this cancer kickin' dinner. Cancer kicker. I've got to... We're always one-upping ourselves between the heart surgeons and the cancer surgeons. So this is my little surprise for you all. This is my little secret. I don't want you to forget to use spices to turn any meal into an anti-inflammatory meal. So this is a tip that I've just learned, but it's becoming very popular. You take curcumin, right? That's a compound in turmeric. It looks like this. Beautiful color. The American Cancer Society argues that you mix that with a teaspoon full of olive oil, a little bit of black pepper to help the absorption. Then you can add it. You can do it the way Christy's doing it as well. Put it on your chicken, for example. Put it on any protein you're having, and it makes it into an anti-inflammatory meal. Now, I want to ask one more favor of you. We've been talking this season a lot about the problems with narcotics being prescribed to patients, which is, I think, giving rise to a lot of the addiction. You know, the number one cause of accidental death in Americans under age 50 is now related to addiction. And a lot of that's because people are getting narcotics in the doctor's office. You're part of a campaign that doesn't use narcotics. Please explain this. Well, the Voice Your Choice campaign is headed up by HealthyWomen.org. And basically, we're trying to educate women and all people that there are non-narcotic ways to control pain before, during, and after operations such that the pain is already under such great control. Narcotics on the back end can be limited or eliminated altogether. It's a serious problem. Narcotic addiction needs to stop with the doctors who are prescribing it. 50% of women who get addicted had their first narcotic taste from normal post-operative pain, like a C-section. Yeah, and people don't realize how addictive it is. I know how passionate you are about it because you joined the campaign. Thanks for being here and sharing all this wonderful information. Dr. Funk! Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.