Struck by one of the rarest cancer diagnoses possible, a young woman has recovered from a never-before-performed surgery and radiation therapy to come out disease free.

Diagnosed with two bone tumors, the hospital only found the second one because somebody performed an MRI scan at a spot that was lower on her spine than they were supposed to.

The story begins when Karla Flores, 19, began to experience double vision. The diagnosis was a chordoma, a bone tumor that afflicts the spinal column diagnosed only 300 times a year in a country of 330 million people.

Referred to the University of Maryland Medical Center’s department of neurosurgery, Flores was told by the doctor set to lead the effort to remove the chordoma that the malignant tumor was pressing on the cranial nerve, which was caus

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