9-year-old cancer survivor defies odds to dance in "The Nutcracker"
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The holiday tradition of "The Nutcracker" is underway at the Academy of Music. One of the dancers is a Philadelphia transplant patient. She's a little girl who's defying the odds, dancing after years of battling a variety of health problems.
Doctors didn't know if she would survive, much less be able to dance, but this little girl is living her dream in the case of "The Nutcracker."
Nine-year-old Bernadette Sanchez loves to dance. Beyond her ballerina looks, there's a little girl with a very complicated medical situation.
"It's been amazing because we never thought she would be able to do anything like this," Katherine Sanchez, Bernadette's mother, said. "Let alone just be as healthy as she is right now."
At 2, Bernadette was diagnosed with cancer. After a series of complications, she needed a rare kind of transplant.
"She got what's called a multi-visceral transplant," Katherine Sanchez said. "It's liver, stomach, pancreas, small bowel."
"I don't remember that much about it," Bernadette said.
Five years later, she's on stage at the Academy of Music dancing in "The Nutcracker," her dream come true.
"Magical," Bernadette said. "You get to dance for people, you get to spend time. If you have friends in it too, you get to spend time with them."
This little girl from South Philly plays a soldier and angel.
"It's a gigantic milestone," Katherine Sanchez said. "It's huge. It's unheard of for anyone that's like her to be able to survive this long, be this healthy, be able to achieve their dreams."
At the performance Wednesday evening, members of Bernadette's medical team from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were there.
"Honestly, it was a dream," Dr. Tina Bales said. "I felt like I was dreaming."
Bales is Bernadette's main doctor at CHOP. She said it's "monumental" that Bernadette is able to dance in "The Nutcracker."
"It was great to see them and just see, they knew exactly how far she's come, how long it took to get to this point," Katherine Sanchez said. "And it was, it was like a family reunion almost."
Together, watching the little dancer beating the odds, performing in the fairy tale ballet about the magic of childhood.
The team at CHOP has been managing Bernadette's care, but the transplant was done at Georgetown and that doctor was part of the medical watching Wednesday's performance.
