Mum, girls fight hereditary disease WAITING GAME: Grace Parker with her mum Margaret Parker. GRACE Parker is yet to finish primary school and she has lung cancer. The Queensland schoolgirl was only 10 when she was diagnosed with a type of cancer so rare in children her paediatric oncologist has never seen another case. Doctors believe her cancer is hereditary. Grace's mother, Margaret, 52, and her newly married sister Carissa, 31, also have the disease. All three were diagnosed within a period of about six months last year. Margaret's father died of lung cancer in his 30s and her grandfather also died at a young age, although she doesn't know the cause. "We've done a bit of a family tree search and there's a whole arm of my Dad's family we didn't know existed because of early deaths," she said. It's too early to say at this stage but we're assuming that it's due to lung cancer. Until we dig a bit further, we won't know for sure. Prince Charles Hospital thoracic physician Kwun Fong plans to compare the DNA of family members with and without the cancer, hopeful of discovering a lung cancer gene. It certainly seems that lung cancer runs in the family. If we can do the research and find a responsible gene, that gene may also be abnormal in other people with lung cancer," Professor Fong said. If we can work out what it's doing abnormally, we could potentially try to reverse that. The family understands the importance of research. They know it may not only help them but it may also help others. Grace, who loves cheerleading and is a fan of boy band One Direction, has at least 30 small tumours, no bigger than about 1cm in diameter, pitted throughout her lungs, making surgical removal impossible. With scans showing no change in the tumours since she was first diagnosed a year ago, and with little known about the cancer in children, the 11-year-old's specialist, Tim Hassall of Brisbane's Royal Children's Hospital, is holding off giving her chemotherapy. "There's no curative therapy options at the moment, otherwise we would have done it," he said. Grace's lungs have not changed since I first met her. At the moment, we're adopting a wait-and-see approach. In an otherwise well child, you don't want to jump in with poisons when the cancer's not changing. Dr Hassall has consulted closely with Prof Fong, chair of the Lung Foundation Australia's cancer consultative group, about Grace's care. The Parkers have a type of cancer known as adenocarcinoma, a non-small cell lung cancer, which can occur in non-smokers, but is rarely seen in families. Although Ms Parker is a reformed smoker, Grace and Carissa have never smoked. "Having been a smoker, I'll hold my hand up and say: 'OK, I should have known better'," the mother-of-five said. But my girls don't deserve this. What I'm trying to get across to everyone is, if you've got lungs, you can get lung cancer. Since lung cancer rarely runs in families, providing the Parkers with a prognosis has been difficult. "It's very scary," Ms Parker said. It was absolutely devastating when we first found out. The statistics for adenocarcinoma show that a large percentage don't even make it the first year. It's traumatic thinking half of my family could be wiped out. For some time after they were diagnosed, Ms Parker would allow Grace to stay home from school some days so they could spend time together. "We played hooky," she said. Some mornings we'd wake up and we'd just hang out together, go and have breakfast and things like that. But as time has gone on, it doesn't appear anything is going to happen anytime soon. The situation is turning out to be far better than we could possibly envisage. Now, we're just trying to stay positive and stay strong. We're trying to find our new normal. Ms Parker and Grace will fly to England for a holiday next month as the Gold Coast Mum tries to fulfil her daughter's "bucket list." About 10,000 Australians are diagnosed with lung cancer annually and, in 2010, more than 8000 died of the disease, by far the nation's biggest cancer. To donate to the Prince Charles Hospital Foundation phone 3139 4636.