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Last week, 8-year-old Savannah Anderson seemed fine, but within days, she was facing a brain cancer diagnoses, myFOXtwincities reported.

One of a parent's toughest jobs is to comfort a sick child, and doing it alone is a tall order.

"I want to take all her pain away, and I wish that it's me going through this," Hannah Anderson told FOX 9 News.

Hanna Anderson said her daughter seemed fine before a headache set in. Vomiting followed, and then a brain cancer diagnosis. On Friday, doctors at Children's Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis will remove a golf ball-sized tumor.

"I look back -- just a week ago, she was just fine," Hanna Anderson recalled. "Playing and laughing and happy -- and now she's sitting here in this room, and our whole world is turned upside down."

In times like these, Hannah Anderson said she wishes with all her heart that her husband, Josh, could still be here.

"He was the fairy-tale man you see in the movies," she said. "He was the best husband and father. He was our everything."

In January 2008, Pfc. Joshua Anderson was killed in Iraq.

"They look just like each other. I see how much they both loved each other -- and the bond they had," Hannah Anderson said looking back on video from the family's first meeting with FOX 9 News. "He loved her with everything in him … He was very proud of being a father."

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