Staff photo by Dean Shalhoup Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and expected to die shortly before Chistmas some 25 years ago, Sara Martin and her mom, Susan, left, had other ideas, and although the disease caused lifelong disabilities, Sara likes to point out with a smile, "I'm still here!" They are joined by one of their pets, Jackie.

NEW IPSWICH – Sara Martin weighed just one pound and 11 ounces when she was born nearly four months prematurely, but once out of the incubator, she grew at a robust pace and all but caught up to normal size for her age.

The little girl was the picture of health, normal in every sense as she passed her first birthday and began closing in on her second. By then she’d begun to walk, toddling around the tiny but homey Nashua apartment she shared with her parents and brother.

Little Sara fell sometimes, as is common among toddlers still trying to perfect the process of getting around on two limbs rather than four.

But the sometimes falls became often falls, and Sara’s family noticed she’d developed a rather bizarre habit: climbing onto the couch, grabbing the fabric and repeatedly slamming her neck and head backward.

“We had no idea why,” Susan Martin said Sunday, seated next to Sara in the living room of her older daughter’s rambling New Ipswich home.

“So we brought her in” to the doctor. “They did a brain scan,” Susan said, recalling getting the devastating news that her daughter, barely 2, had a tumor on her brain stem that needed immediate surgery.

While surgeons were able to remove 90 percent of the tumor, known in medical speak as an ependymoma, the prognosis wasn’t a whole lot more encouraging than the original diagnosis, Susan recalls.

The tumor had already done plenty of damage, enough that Sara was declared terminal. The next thing Susan knew, a group of nice people from hospice were taking turns visiting her and Sara, doing whatever they could to help keep Sara as comfortable as possible.

But Susan Martin didn’t like one bit how this script was written – especially the ending.

“I was having none of it,” she said Sunday. “She fought too hard to be here. We all fought too hard for her to be here,” Martin added, referring to Sara.

It seemed like everyone was just waiting for Sara to die. “I finally said ‘no, she’s not dying,'” Martin said. “I remember kicking hospice out … I told them she’s not going to die.”

Sara, who doctors estimated had about a month to live at that point, didn’t die, as her mom had predicted. Nor did she die in two months, six months, one year, five years, 10 years – or 25 years.

The miracle drug that saved Sara’s life? Well, it wasn’t a drug at all.

“I asked people to pray for us,” Martin said. “So many people, when they found out how sick Sara was, wanted to donate to us, to do something for us. All I wanted was for them to pray. And that’s what they did.”

Sara pulled through, but the tumor left its mark. As her mom puts it, Sara is “stuck at age 3,” leaving her with disabilities that require near-constant care.

All that is perfectly fine with Susan Martin, her elder daughter, and other family members.

For quite awhile, “we did nothing else … just took care of her,” Martin said, referring to her and the family. “I got so used to it … we take turns” helping Sara walk around the spacious yard that comes with living in small towns like New Ipswich.

So “used to it” is Martin that the fact the two share a bed is “just the way it is,” and it is also a medical necessity: Sara has severe sleep apnea, to the point her mom has to poke her to wake her almost constantly so she won’t stop breathing.

“I got so used to it I just (poke Sara) in my sleep now,” she said with a laugh.

To Martin and her family, it’s “an absolute miracle” that Sara is not only still here, but doing quite well despite her disabilities.

At age 27, going on 28, Sara “is still here” because “to me, people’s prayers helped so much … .”

Sara sometimes blurts out the phrase she’s come to love.

“Yeah I’m still here!”

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.