Havelock girl's 'Mystery Diagnosis'

Amy Perryman noticed that her third-grade daughter, Ashley, was always thirsty. Then the headaches started, followed by double vision.

"I had been having really bad headaches for a while and my left eye turned in and I was seeing double," Ashley said in a telephone interview. "I was drinking gallons of water for the past years. I started vomiting, and that’s when they took me to the doctor."

What Ashley and her mother didn’t know — and what doctors initially couldn’t figure out — was that a tumor was growing inside the brain of the little girl who would be suddenly thrust into a battle for her life.

The story of Ashley Mullinax, now a 16-year-old freshman at Havelock High School, will be featured in the television show "Mystery Diagnosis" on the Discovery Health channel. The program is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. on Monday.

Ashley’s pediatrician initially diagnosed her with a sinus infection and placed her on antibiotics.

When the headaches got worse, Ashley was taken to another pediatrician who put her on another set of antibiotics.

One day her mother saw Ashley covering her left eye.

"When I covered one eye, I could see one thing," she said. "It just helped."

They went to see another doctor, this time, a opthamologist who recommended that a neurologist examine Ashley. She went and was given a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan, or MRI, and the results revealed a serious problem.

The scan showed a large mass deep inside Ashley’s brain. The tumor was causing a blockage in the flow of her brain fluid, and she was in severe risk for a stroke.

She was rushed to the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital in Chapel Hill where she underwent emergency surgery on Sept. 13, 2002, to remove the cancerous lump from her brain.

After the successful surgery, the headaches were gone. So was the double vision.

"I remember asking her ‘How many mommies do you see?’ and she looked up and said ‘Just one mommy,’" Amy Perryman said of her daughter.

Ashley stayed in the hospital for two more weeks.

"I was eager to get home and be in my own bed and have home-cooked food and not be in the hospital any more," she said.

But, she wasn’t exactly cured. Over the next three months, she underwent two rounds of chemotherapy, which resulted in the loss of her hair, something that would devastate many girls.

"I don’t really remember having a big problem with it," she said. "I had been through so much at that point it really didn’t matter any more."

Today, 7 1/2 years after the fight of her life, Ashley is a Havelock High ninth-grade honor roll student who just happens to be a cancer survivor.

"I’m just trying to get through high school now," she said. "I’m taking eight medications a day. But it really hasn’t affected me that much. I’ve had problems with sleep. Other than that, I’m just a normal teenager."

Discovery Health is on Time Warner Cable channel 30 in the Havelock, eastern Craven and Carteret County areas.