Stricken With Cancer, Baseball Diamonds Are This Girl's Best Friend
LA VERNE (CBSLA.com) — Emily Lomeli has always been obsessed with baseball.
Now a 5th grader at Gridley Elementary school, the 10-year-old doesn't want to play on the softball team -- that's for girls!
Lomeli prefers the more hard-scrabble game of baseball. She's been playing since she was 3. She played one game with a broken wrist -- enduring the pain until the game was over.
She recently told the San Fernando Valley Sun that she loves playing as the only girl on the North Valley Youth Baseball team in Granada Hills. She's an all-star and versatile -- you can find her in right field, on first base, she's a stand out relief pitcher
Lomeli stands out for one more reason.
Emily's mother, Edwina, told KCAL9's Adrianna Weingold that the little girl has contracted ovarian cancer, rare in someone so young.
Lomeli complained of stomach aches, but no one dreamed it was cancer. Not her parents, not her doctors.
Through it all, Edwina tells Weingold she has been by her daughter's side.
"She's like a glue stick right next to me," says Edwina, "She doesn't want me to go anywhere. If I leave the room, she's like 'Momma, where are you going?' I think she just feels safe that I'm next to her."
The doctors told her parents she had a rare type of cancer called immature ovarian teratoma and one of Emily's ovaries would have to be removed.
"It's unexplainable for a mother to hear that, especially about their child," Edwina says, "I really haven't thought about it -- only because I just want Emily to see me with a smile on my face, to assure her that everything is going to go well."
The family -- Emily also has four siblings -- has been put through the ringer. Mom has to stay home to care for her, run her to her many appointments -- including chemo.
Several fundraisers have been held, more to be planned.
But Emily is happy to see that her team, the Titans, have also rallied to help her.
"When they are around me, I feel better. I feel more comfortable," Emily said. All she wants is to be healthy enough to keep on playing ball, and sooner than later.
"I have to play baseball again," she says, "to be back on the field."
A website has also been set up where people can send Lomeli messages of hope and make donations to her care and treatment. She is due a third round of chemo in a couple of weeks.
The site is called "Believein17" for the family philosophy to always believe and for her baseball jersey #17.
For more information about Emily and the site, click here.
