‘She’s just a kid’: Belton, Texas teenager starts cancer fight in middle of holiday season

BELTON, Texas (KWTX) - Just days after Thanksgiving, a Belton girl was diagnosed with cancer and just spent Christmas away from family and in a hotel near the hospital.

Her name is Elizabeth, 13, and she’s a vibrant child who attends Lake Belton Middle School. And the world that she knew is no longer the same.

It started as chest pain and a trip to the doctor turned into a mass near her heart and state three cancer diagnosis.

“No one can prepare anybody for that,” says her mother, Sarah Constant.

Constant is a single mom of four and is now distant from her three other kids to help Elizabeth get better.

Sarah can’t work. Elizabeth can’t go to school. Hospital and hotel rooms are their foreseeable future.

“I can’t leave her home alone. There are so many complications that could happen with her medicine so I have to be with her,” her mother explains.

Just before Christmas, Elizabeth underwent surgery to prepare her for chemotherapy.

“There’s about to be a lot of unknowns. It’s a lot of scary. She’s about to start losing her hair in the next week or so.,” Constant says.

To lift her spirits, a local photographer and make-up artist gave Elizabeth a glam shoot for her sweet 13.

“We had photographers coming forward, makeup artists coming forward and someone even treated her to a spa day,” her mom says while explaining the community effort that went into making her daughter feel so special.

Community and prayer is what is holding them up and with three younger ones at home, mom spends everyday just trying to keep it together.

“They know the word cancer and they know people die from cancer so they’re scared because now their sister is the one that has it and they’re riding into the unknown with us,” she says.

They have a GoFundMe for financial help, since mom can’t work, to help them maintain a sense of normalcy as they navigate this next chapter.

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