WARDEN — Avree Pruneda and her family received possibly the worst news Jan. 15, 2020, when the Warden High School junior was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, an extremely rare form of cancer.

But after a trying journey involving countless hospital stays in Spokane and sleepless nights for the family, Avree Pruneda now is cancer-free and looking forward to a typical teenage life.

Tara Pruneda, Avree’s mother, said her daughter will have her three-month check-up visit on Feb. 8 to have some scans and blood work done, but everything’s looking good so far.

She said she’s hoping Avree can talk to the doctor about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, as someone who’s at high risk, and potentially could go back to school in the coming months.

“If she could get (the vaccine), we’d feel better,” Tara Pruneda said. “I think that she really needs going back to school, even if it’s just the two days a week, for her mental health, not being home as much.”

As her immune system continues to recover from chemotherapy, Avree’s gotten some more freedom, including receiving her driver’s license recently, Tara Pruneda said. She said Avree’s been driving around and to her own physical therapy appointments.

Avree Pruneda said it’s wonderful to ask her parents if she can visit friends or out to grab coffee like a typical teenager might. But, she said her parents are still cautious about who she visits, making sure they haven’t been around a lot of people in recent weeks.

“It’s been nice to just go on rides with my brother during the day to go get coffee or go on a snack run, go to my own physical therapy,” Avree Pruneda said. “It’s really the little things that make me happy now because before I got diagnosed, I always thought I can do this, I can do that. But once I wasn’t able to, I don’t take the little things for granted anymore.”

Avree Pruneda said she tries to live every day to the fullest now. Looking through photos from this time last year on Snapchat of losing her hair or beginning chemotherapy, she said it’s difficult recollecting everything she went through.

While it’s difficult to look back, Avree said she’s just happy she doesn’t have to go through it again, but she still gets “chemo brain” from time to time, forgetting what she’s doing or where she is.

The Warden teen said she’s eager to go back to school and see her friends, as well as taking a trip to Hawaii around her birthday this year, thanks to the Wishing Star Foundation.

“I’m just really excited to say hi to everyone in the morning like I used to,” Avree Pruneda said. “I know it’s not going to be the same because of all the rules, but it’s better than staying home all the time.”

Tara Pruneda said they knew nothing about the cancer her daughter was diagnosed with last year. So, she said that began a process of trying to learn as much information as possible, which inevitably led to an information overload.

But she said talking with the doctors, nurses and support staff at the hospital helped. Along the way, she said there were good days and bad days in the hospital and plenty of times when the family wanted to just come home.

“You don’t know how resilient you are or how resilient your kids are until you go through something like that,” Tara Pruneda said.

COVID-19 popping up in the midst of a cancer battle didn’t make anything easier on anyone, Tara Pruneda said. Restrictions made it nearly impossible for anyone other than Tara, or Avree’s father, Gabe Pruneda, to visit while she was in Spokane.

FaceTime conversations with friends and other family members were nice to have, but Tara said they’re not the same connections as in-person. Even the kids in the hospital weren’t able to interact once COVID-19 came into play.

“COVID really does suck, but try being a cancer patient in the cancer ward, COVID really, really does suck,” Tara Pruneda said. “Everything is limited.”

Tara praised her daughter’s fight through the the past year. She said anytime Avree was ready to give up or just pack up and go home, she’d take a moment and do what she needed to do, such as call a friend or take a nap.

“I tried to tell her this is not a bad life, this is a bad day or a bad hour,” Tara Pruneda said. “Moments really suck, but there’s light at the end and we just have to get there.”

Gabe Pruneda made as many trips to the hospital in Spokane as he could, but spent a large portion of time back in Warden taking care of Avree’s younger brother. Watching his daughter’s fight from afar, only able to communicate through FaceTime and over the phone, was tough.

“It was good to see them on FaceTime, but it just wasn’t the same,” Gabe Pruneda said. “Some days I’d try and go in early for work and make a day trip up there if I could. Work was really flexible with me.”

Having Avree back home the last few months has been fantastic, Gabe Pruneda said. He said even the normal sibling fighting between Avree and her brother is nice to see. After seeing her come home completely drained from chemo treatments and hospital visits, it’s nice seeing Avree getting back to those normal teenager energy levels, he said.

Avree Pruneda said the support she received from everyone in the community, including friends and family, has been amazing. She said even little things like someone saying, “hope things go well today,” brought joy to her heart.

Now cancer-free, Avree Pruneda said she feels like she can handle anything life throws her way.

“I won’t say I’m the fiercest woman ever; there’s way more girls that are having more troubles than I did,” Avree Pruneda said. “But whatever life throws at me, I will try and conquer as much as I can with what strength God gave me.”

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.