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ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -Right wing Dmitry Kugryshev has signed a three-year, entry-level contract with the Washington Capitals. The 20-year-old Kugryshev was a second-round pick in the 2008 draft. The Russian is in his second season with the Quebe...

Filed under: Minor League Hockey

On Feb. 3, Jeff and Dorie Christian picked up their 8-year-old daughter Ryan, their only child, from school and spent the rest of the day as a family. In their latest hometown of Independence, Mo. -- Jeff is a 20-year pro hockey player now playing in the Central League -- the Christians went to Walmart and watched Ryan practice with her basketball team.

"Just a nice, normal, beautiful day," said Jeff, a 1988 second-round pick of the New Jersey Devils and now a player-assistant coach with the Missouri Mavericks.

The next day, Ryan came home early from school complaining of headaches. When her mother attempted to wake her a few hours later for a doctor's appointment, the young girl was unresponsive. Ryan was taken to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., where doctors stabilized her and performed a CAT scan and MRI. While at the hospital, she began to suffer seizures caused by extremely high blood pressure. More tests followed until the answer finally came.

Ryan had a tumor on her adrenal gland that needed to be removed -- immediately. The diagnosis was Pedriatric Adrenalcortical Carcinoma, cancer near her kidney that is considered to be a one-in-a-million case. Today, she is under the care of the renowned physicians at St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis.

 

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