Monticello Live

Sarah Pennington, a senior at Drew Central High School in Monticello, AR, chose to do a pageant titled “Crowns for Cancer” as her senior project after she heard the story of twelve-year-old MacKenzy McCarty and her fight against thyroid cancer.
Sarah wanted to raise money to help MacKenzy and her family with the costs and to bring awareness to her individual fight and the outlook against this horrible disease. The pageant was held Sunday, February 9th and raised over $2700 for MacKenzy, her family, and their continued fight towards remission. Attached is MacKenzy’s story. Today MacKenzy is seeing her oncologist. Sarah would like to help raise awareness of MacKenzy’s unique story due to her age and rareness.

It all started in September 2018, when MacKenzy was diagnosed with strep throat and put on antibiotics. She went back to the physician a week or two later because she wasn’t feeling any better. Her throat swabs came back showing she still had strep. She was given another antibiotic and followed up with the physician again at a later date with swollen lymph nodes in her neck. Strep was negative but Mac was still sick. The physician decided to send her to an ENT clinic in Pine Bluff. She went to him and he gave her some more medication and told her he was sending her to a specialist in Little Rock. It was now late November when she went to see the new physician. He did an ultrasound and a biopsy on 6 lymph nodes in her neck. Her appointment to find out the results was on December 6, 2018.

She saw the oncologist and was diagnosed with Metastatic Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. She was scheduled for a scan on December 17th and was to see the surgeon that day as well. The surgeon stated that her neck was full of cancer, along with her lungs. Her surgery was December 28, 2018 at UAMS in Little Rock.

Her surgery was very extensive and difficult. She sure was a trooper; smiling even through the pain and sickness. She went through radioactive iodine treatment, isolation, and dieting in
February of 2019. After getting another scan, the scan showed that it had metastasized even more. She underwent radioactive iodine treatment again in late August of 2019. She went back in November of 2019, where the physician stated that she didn’t respond to the treatments and at this time this is the only treatment option for her. Since she didn’t respond to the 2 previous treatments, there was no need to repeat it at this time.
MacKenzy goes back to UAMS on February 11, 2020 for in depth scans to see if the cancer has spread more or if it is still the same. MacKenzy has a very difficult and long road ahead of her! Please continue to pray for her.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 14th, 2020 at 12:43 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.