**12-Year-Old Alabama Volleyball Player Is Facing Bone Cancer With Hope **
**12-Year-Old Alabama Volleyball Player Is Facing Bone Cancer With Hope **
How do you wrap your head around it?
A **12-year-old girl from Gardendale, Alabama**, who loves volleyball and dreams of returning to the sport she loves, is now facing a battle with bone cancer.
Skylar Ingram is preparing to enter eighth grade. She has spent years playing volleyball and dreams of following in the footsteps of her idol, fellow Gardendale native and professional volleyball player **Merritt Beason**.
Then came the diagnosis her family never expected.
The pain in Skylar’s femur turned out to be **osteosarcoma**, a type of bone cancer.
Skylar is finishing her final round of chemotherapy before undergoing a complex surgery intended to remove the affected portion of her femur and reconstruct the leg using bone and blood supply from her other leg.
Her mother, Kelly, says the surgery could last **more than 20 hours**, followed by time in the ICU and a lengthy recovery.
Skylar knows the road ahead will be difficult.
But she is taking it one day at a time.
**“It’s been difficult to digest, but God has a plan,”** Skylar said.
And her dreams haven’t disappeared.
She still hopes to heal.
She still dreams of becoming an anesthesiologist.
And one day, she hopes to return to the volleyball court.
