Former QB'S daughter has tumour removed

Former NFL quarterback Alex Smith praised his “sweet, selfless, intelligent, hilarious, witty, fun-loving” daughter's strength while announcing that she is recovering from brain surgery to remove a “very rare malignant tumour.”

Smith wrote Saturday on Instagram that Sloane, youngest of his three children with his wife Elizabeth and their only daughter, was stricken with “strokelike symptoms” on May 10.

He explained that doctors informed the Smiths that she “had a large brain tumour and needed an emergency craniotomy.”

Ten hours of surgery at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., was “the most excruciating time of our lives,” he wrote. Neurosurgeons, he said, removed all of the tumour and Sloane “in her true form — bounced back from brain surgery like a rock star! She didn't skip a beat.”

However, pathology determined that she had “a very rare malignant tumour with very few documented cases — without a clear road map for treatment. We are currently awaiting more tests and gathering as many opinions as we can from doctors across the country to decide the best path forward. We wish this were easy, clearcut and someone gave us a how-to guide.”

The six-year-old “has healed” and is “back to her bubbly self. Singing, dancing, laughing and feeling good.” He added that, “most of all she is an incredibly strong girl that has a ton of fight in her.”

Smith went on to thank “our amazing medical team, family, friends, acquaintances and even some strangers who have touched our lives in the last month and a half. We have struggled to keep up on calls, texts, communication and trying to keep loved ones updated.

“This has been by far the most challenging time we have EVER been through. We know it's not over and we have a journey ahead of us, but without all of you we could not have gotten this far.”