By BEN LUNDIN

Staff Reporter

If Ariel Landry crafted a novel, besides the pictures colored only with pink, you’d never know a nine-year-old wrote the book.

She’s a worldly child, a modern renaissance girl and a boundless wonder of come-backs with an intellect as sharp as a knife.

She wields her bright-eyed curiosity and half-crescent smile with a mature confidence, laughingly dancing over others’ words with a cleverness that stops them in their tracks.

After she was told she’d be asked a short series of questions that wore on for nearly a half an hour she snapped back with a giggle, &#8220When you say short do you actually mean long?”

When not spending her time writing her latest masterpiece she delves into photography, piano and teaching her cockatiel a new vocabulary.

If she’s feeling down, she’ll find a way to cook for her stuffed animals on a stove that doesn’t work, watch her favorite movies or relax in the absence of work.

&#8220When I don’t have homework that cheers me up,” she said.

But some of her favorite activities – soccer, school and spending time with friends – are now almost nothing more than a memory.

While the rest of the southeast imbibed the jubilation of Mardi Gras, Ariel Landry waited in physical anguish to find out news of a magnitude she couldn’t grasp.

On February 23 she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, 10 days after her ninth birthday.

Staying true to her maturity, she took on this potentially deadly disease that rarely attacks anyone under the age of 13.

But she just wants to be a normal kid again.

In December 2006 she became plagued with headaches, fevers and inflamed lymph nodes, but a pediatrician wrongly pronounced her healthy and overlooked the disease in its earliest stages.

When the aches and pains grew worse a second pediatrician referred her to an oncologist at the New Orleans Children’s Hospital, where a biopsy revealed she was suffering from stage 2 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

She was lucky. Had she been misdiagnosed a second time the cancer may have spread and reached stages 3 or 4, rendering it far more challenging for her to put the disease into remission.

Ariel’s parents withdrew her from school to teach her from home and she now spends almost one day every week at the New Orleans Children’s Hospital undergoing treatments, including chemotherapy every two weeks.

Ariel suffers through muscle weakness, bone aches and hair loss from the chemotherapy.

But she claims the worst part is the 10 pills she must take each day.

&#8220They taste nasty,” she said. &#8220That’s why I always drink chocolate milk after I take my pills.”

She may not have to take the pills for too long. More than 85% of all Hodgkins Lymphoma cases are curable.

&#8220At first I was dumbstruck and I was just so scared when I found out, but they kept assuring me there was a cure and they have good results,” Ariel’s mother Maye Landry said.

However, those results come with a price tag far higher than the average person can afford.

&#8220There’s so much treatment and we have so many scans and all that we have to go through, and she’s got the chemo and the doctors and the hospital stays. I don’t even want to think about it. (The doctors) went through treatment without saying costs, and we’re not even looking at that right now. We’re just looking at getting her better,” Maye said.

When the news broke, kind hearts throughout the community stepped in to help Ariel beat the disease.

Maye’s coworker Carol Pierce at Prudential Gardner set up a donation account at the LaPlace Capital One under the name &#8220Ariel Landry,” but funds can be deposited into the account worldwide.

Teachers from Ariel’s former school bring the Landry family dinner every Monday, and during lent the Knights of Columbus brought meals every Friday.

&#8220Everybody has been very helpful and I’m so blessed with that. I asked God to help everybody who has been helping us. We have been blessed. I didn’t know I had that many friends,” Maye said.

Ariel’s laughter is unbreakable, her wit unshakable and the pleasure she soaks in from life never waning even in the face of a disease trying to rip it all away.

But before she can rise up in victory over her cancer, she’ll need a little generosity from people she has never met.