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Cancer patient banned from daughter’s school for bad smell

Cancer patient Kerri Mascareno was banned from her daughter’s school. (Screengrab/KOB4)

An Albuquerque, New Mexico mother with breast cancer says she was forbidden from entering her daughter's school because the body odour caused by her treatment is repulsive.

KOB Eyewitness News reported Kerri Mascareno, the mother of Lynsey, a student at Tierra Antigua Elementary, was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in August. This fall, she said the school asked her to stop coming to the school because the smell from her chemotherapy pill treatment was making teachers and staff ill.

Mascareno told the news outlet about the upsetting discussion she had with the principal:

He just said he knows this is going to hurt my feelings and he understands where I’m coming from because his mother had breast cancer and she had the same exact smell and I can no longer be in the school and that with me being in the school that I made his employees ill.

Mascareno went outside, according to the story, but the principal told her she needed to sit in her car because the still was emanating through the window. She was also told she couldn't attend the school's thanksgiving dinner unless she sat in isolation with her daughter, KOB reported.

[ Related: Mom accused of telling son he had cancer to raise money for scam ]

She later told the broadcaster she chose to skip the event and eat at home with her daughter.

The Stanford Medicine Cancer Institute says chemotherapy can affect the body in many ways, including causing urine to have a strong medicinal odour. Online support forums for cancer patients show some posters inquiring about a strange, unpleasant smell during treatment.