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After 5-year-old Hildie Platter was diagnosed with selective mutism a year and a half ago, her mother, Janette Platter, turned to The Children's SPOT (Speech, Physical, and Occupational Therapy) for rehabilitative speech services through play therapy.

Now, on the 14th anniversary of her diagnosis, Kelly, 43, is cancer free and grateful for the care she received at Saint Luke's East Hospital in Lee's Summit and Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City.

While the mortality rate for breast cancer in the U.S. has significantly declined from its peak in 1989, incidence among younger women has steadily increased each year since 2001, according to the American Cancer Society.

Bernadette Priestley had just moved back to Wisconsin from London with her husband and two boys when her life changed forever.   

The Koontz Center has cared for hundreds of patients with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer since its inception in 2016.

When Maribeth Kammert first learned she had cancer in 2015, her world came to a stop. It was early stage breast cancer. “I was at Beauty Brands with my mom when I got the call. I went into the bathroom because I didn’t know how I would react. I didn’t cry,” said Maribeth. “I just had this instinct that I was going to take care of it, and God was going to take care of me. And if the outcome wasn’t what I wanted, I’d be okay with that.”

Peaches Tutera Cunningham and her husband, David, welcomed their son, John David, into the world in 1996. Two short years later, John David was diagnosed with autism.