“My life did not change in a day; my life changed in seconds,” says Richelle Virgil, of the moment a doctor told her that her 12-year-old daughter N’Keema had a tumour on her brain. “Oh my God, it was terrible. There was no warning.”

It was New Year’s Eve 2012 and Ms Virgil had taken the youngster to the emergency room at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital a few days before, suffering, she thought, from dehydration caused by a bad bout of flu.

But as they arrived at the door of ER, N’Keema collapsed. She was kept in overnight, complaining of headaches, stomach pain and problems with her balance, and her paediatrician Stephen West ordered a battery of tests the following day, including an ultrasound, a CT scan and an MRI.

The first two tests showed little but the MRI, carried out on December 31, was a different matter and Dr West took Ms Virgil into a private room, two doors down from where her daughter was resting, to break the news.

“He said ‘we found the source of N’Keema’s problems’. I instantly froze because he said he found something. He said ‘I found a mass on the back of her brain, on the right side of her brain’. I said ‘OK’. I told Dr West to shut up. I said ‘I can’t hear this by myself’.”

Ms Virgil got one of her older daughters to join her in the room and they listened together as Dr West explained that N’Keema would have to fly off the Island with her mother that evening for further tests.

“I couldn’t even go home to get my clothes,” says Ms Virgil. “By the time Dr West came to tell me what was going on, that air ambulance was already on the way.

“When a doctor has to deliver news to you, when you see the doctor with tears in his eyes, as much as he tried to conceal it — he was no longer a doctor, in my eyes, he was a parent, a concerned parent.”

Things moved breathtakingly fast after that conversation — and Ms Virgil thanks God that they did, for once N’Keema was assessed at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) it became clear that she had two rapidly growing, malignant brain tumours — known as medulloblastoma — and needed urgent, life-saving treatment.

A year and three months later, the Dellwood Middle School student is all smiles as she poses for photographs for The Royal Gazette with her mom and twin sister N’Tajee — and it’s no wonder.

She was declared cancer-free on her last visit to Philadelphia and her family are hoping and praying she stays that way.

“I feel awesome,” says N’Keema, flashing the trademark grin that her mother says won her so many friends at CHOP.

The teen, now aged 13, had three operations and extensive radiation and chemotherapy at the hospital.

She lost all her hair and her weight dropped from 70lbs to about 52lbs — but that smile never faltered, according to her mother, and she amazed medics with her strength, resilience and courage.

Asked how she got through her ordeal, N’Keema thinks for a moment and then gestures to her mother: “You pushed me and my mind pushed me too. I wasn’t happy to be in hospital [but] I was happy to see my doctors and nurses.”

N’Keema remembers little of that fateful New Year’s Eve in 2012 — other than that she saw in 2013 in two different countries — but it’s indelibly etched into the memories of her mother, siblings and other close relatives.

Ms Virgil recalls how everyone gathered at KEMH before the air ambulance flight to say their farewells, desperately trying to hold back their tears in front of N’Keema.

“I think everybody came to the hospital knowing that she had the tumour,” says Ms Virgil. “They were so emotional. I had to turn and walk away. They made her laugh. We took pictures. It was her twin that broke down.”

She describes how N’Tajee told her she was terrified her sister would never return to Bermuda. “She was so scared that her sister was going to die,” says Ms Virgil.

“We finally got her to calm down a bit. She was finally able to go back in the room. She lay in bed with her sister — we gave them their space.”

Eventually, it was time for N’Keema to board the air ambulance, telling her mom: “I just want to see snow.”

Ms Virgil, who was terrified of flying and hadn’t been on a plane for years, looked into the air ambulance and declared: “I can’t do it.”

But her cousin, who had joined her on the concourse, told her she had to.

“I took one look at my child and said ‘I have to do this for her’,” says Ms Virgil, adding that her daughter drifted to sleep as the plane took off. “I laid my head on top of her and I closed my eyes and it was the most peaceful time of my life.”

There was no snow to greet them in Philadelphia but the staff at CHOP could not have given them a warmer welcome.

“They were amazing,” says Ms Virgil. “As much as I cried, they gave me strength. They made you feel as if you were in the hands of somebody who was going to do everything in their power to make sure this turns out in a positive way.

“They didn’t make me feel like I was just a parent, at that point. I was one of them.”

The tests at CHOP revealed that N’Keema had a second tumour on top of her brain and that both were malignant and needed to be removed.

“There’s no cause,” says Ms Virgil. “I beat myself up tremendously but it wasn’t anything that I could have done during pregnancy or after.

“It wasn’t hereditary. They couldn’t tell me why and they couldn’t tell me how long it had been there.”

The mother-of-eight recalls how in the weeks before N’Keema was admitted to KEMH in December 2012, she had developed a slight nervous twitch, become clumsy on her left side and stopped making eye contact.

Her mother had made an appointment with Dr West but then the youngster got ill with what seemed to be flu and the appointment was postponed. The brain tumour diagnosis at CHOP tied in with the symptoms.

The treatment at CHOP included an initial operation to remove most of the tumour at the back of N’Keema’s brain, followed by radiation to destroy what was left and the second tumour.

A later emergency operation was needed when fluid began to build up and N’Keema now has a permanent shunt in her brain.

The physical impact on the youngster was devastating — and she is still recovering.

“Her mobility was limited to that of a baby,” says her mother. “Nothing prepared me for seeing my child like a newborn.”

N’Keema’s first stay at the hospital lasted until March 23 and she and her mother forged several lifelong friendships during that time.

Ms Virgil gradually explained to her daughter the severity of her condition, describing the tumour at first as a “bump” and eventually telling her she had cancer.

“She said ‘OK’. Everything she took so nonchalant and so easy. I said ‘some people won’t be here tomorrow from having cancer and some people will be cured. I don’t know what’s going to happen’. I never, ever — as hard as it was for me as a mother — gave her false hope.

“I wanted her to have hope that she can live but I never hid from her the possibility that she can leave here. I was truthful with her the whole way around.

“Two days after the first surgery, she said to me ‘Mummy, if I go up there, is God going to make me an angel?’ I said ‘yes, he will. He’s going to make you an angel but you are already one and God needs angels on Earth’.”

Ms Virgil sees her daughter’s journey back to health as evidence that miracles really do happen.

So far, N’Keema has not needed a blood transfusion and seems to be getting better every day.

Throughout 2013, between trips to Philadelphia, she returned to school and diligently completed her homework from her hospital bed. She hopes to one day become a doctor or nurse herself.

“She is so humble in her spirit that she doesn’t complain much,” says her proud mother, adding that both twins are now undergoing counselling, for N’Tajee has also had to come to terms with her twin’s disease. N’Keema will be tested regularly by doctors for the next five years to ensure she stays cancer-free.

Ms Virgil stresses how grateful she is to her sister Fawn Melody Arthur for recommending CHOP and being by her side at the hospital.

She is also grateful for the support she’s received from other family and friends, from cancer charity PALS, from her church Midland Heights Seventh-day Adventist and from the community.

And she says she must thank God for everything.

“I have to be thankful for every day, every minute, every second that my child is here. Not just that child, but all my children.”