Search Results
Chancez
Hey, my name is Chancez (ironically, I was blessed with many chances last year). I became a part of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) community last year and was provided financial support. I was also presented with love, care, and daily reminders of all the support that was available to me to get me through such a rough period in my life. A friend of mine suggested that I share my story to help others in our community, especially young adults who are in the same predicament I was once in.
Kenya
I was diagnosed with two blood cancers — multiple myeloma (MM) and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML).
Cancer entered my life at five years old when I lost my father to pancreatic cancer. Then again, when my oldest sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, she is now nine years cancer-free. Then again, when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sadly, we lost my mother in May 2019 to breast cancer
Jarvis
In the fall of 2019, life was very active for me and my 4-year-old son Jarvis. I was busy working 2-3 jobs, and Jarvis was busy just being a kid. Almost every day after school we would go to the park so he could run around and play. He was even starting to get interested in bikes and wanting to learn to ride when he started to mention his feet were hurting.
Rylie
My name is Rylie York, I am 20 years old and I'm currently a sophomore at Baylor University. I'm originally from Round Rock, Texas and I am a patient at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas. I was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 18 in the middle of my senior year of high school. I have relapsed twice since then and completed my bone marrow transplant this past August and September.
Will
I am a cancer mom. I WAS a cancer mom. My youngest son, Will, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) at age 19 in April of 2019. He, his dad, and I were beyond shocked when we heard the news that the swollen lymph nodes that came up out of the blue one March morning were indeed HL. We didn't really know anybody personally that had it. We didn't know what exactly all the words meant at that moment in time, but we knew it wasn't what we had planned for our youngest son.
Julie
My name is Julie. I’m a loving mother of three outstanding kids, a successful businesswoman, wife, breast cancer survivor, and now mother of a true cancer warrior. Ellis, my now 9-year-old son (age 4 at diagnosis), was diagnosed on March 21, 2020 with leukemia. This diagnosis was mere days after the world spiraled into shutdown from COVID-19.Our life, as my family and I knew it, was forever changed the week of March 15, 2020.
Chaneta Juliet
Hi, my name is Chaneta, I like to go by Juliet. This past year has been an interesting one, to say the least. I’m a singer-songwriter who wrote and released an album in October 2017. I thought the year was going to be an amazing one–promoting and performing–unfortunately, I performed one time and I began to literally unravel. In December 2017, I caught the flu. Normal stuff, not too bad right? Well, about three weeks in, it got worse. It turned into walking pneumonia. Chest X-rays revealed a blood clot lodged in my right-side lung.
Lyndi
In March 2019 I began feeling off...I didn't know what it was. I thought perhaps it was a loss of relationship that broke me to my core, or that fact that an old friend had asked me to be kidney donor for someone I had never know. I agreed to be tested to see if I was a possible match. Fast forward to October when I was tested a possible blood clot that had formed from all of this. I was having continual pain in my right shoulder blade.
Emily
Summer 2019 I was feeling great and cancer was the last thing on my mind. I had just run a half marathon and was planning to do a few more destination races. Shortly after the half marathon, I started getting awful knee pain. It was excruciating but I never thought much of it, assuming it was just an injury. After making an appointment at a sports medicine facility an MRI revealed there was a good size tumor in my left knee. This doctor told me it is most likely a giant cell tumor which is benign. From there he referred me to an orthopedic specialist down in Boston.
Joshua
My name is Joshua. I was born and raised in South Florida and moved to Oregon after high school 8 years ago. I can’t say that I had a difficult childhood growing up just difficult circumstances that were challenges to overcome. I am what most people would consider an introverted type of personality, and while I was raised in a home with very caring parents and sisters, I’ve just always found it difficult to fit in, especially once I got to high school. I’m tall, at almost 6 feet, and very smart, always in advanced placement classes.
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn describes herself as a wanderlust who never likes to let the grass grow under her feet. After college, she moved from her hometown in Florida to Houston and spent the next few years moving around Texas for work. She started her new life in Texas where her son, Sterling, was born and raised. She loves traveling, but following a trip to Belize, she started to notice white spots on her skin and other strange issues happening with her health. After doing some research on her own and going to the doctors, she was told she likely had lupus.
Teresa
I was diagnosed in 2009 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Upon diagnosis, perhaps the greatest shock was becoming aware that I knew so little about cancer, so little about the medical system, and how one needs to go about a process of self-education regarding their disease.
My diagnosis occurred at the Simon Cancer Center, a part of the Indiana University Health System. I was fortunate to have a neighbor who is a nurse practitioner at this cancer center. She intervened when she found out that a routine shoulder MRI revealed multiple enlarged lymph nodes.
Allie
When I was in fourth grade, back in 2015, my older brother Nate (a freshman in high school at the time) was rushed down by ambulance to the U of M Masonic Children’s Hospital. His spleen was holding 10x the normal amount of red blood cells. This led to the discovery of his cancer. He was later diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).
Kaitlin
I moved to Chicago in May 2022. I had recently finished my joint PhD in Social Work and Psychology from the University of Michigan and was offered a job as a People Analytics Researcher at Google. I loved the city and enjoyed frequent runs and cycling rides along Lake Shore Drive. In mid-July, I started noticing some symptoms that concerned me ― difficulty breathing when I was exercising, intense chest and back pain, spider veins on my chest, puffiness in my face, and fatigue.
Allie
When I was in fourth grade in 2015, my older brother Nate (a freshman in high school at the time) was rushed by ambulance to the U of M Masonic Children’s Hospital. His spleen was holding 10 times the normal amount of red blood cells. This led to the discovery of his cancer. He was later diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). He missed out on the first month of high school and hockey season, but he was able to take medicines at home so that he could eventually attend the rest of the school year.
Erika
I am a 36-year-old cancer survivor. In February 2014, I found a suspect lump and had become unusually tired. I was a career-driven single mother of a very active 10-year-old boy, so when I say unusually tired it was time to call the doctor. Within days I was thrown into the crazy and often times confusing world of hospital appointments and insurance company battles for various procedures and surgical biopsies. We became pros at the waiting game.
Carly
November 25, 2022 ― the worst day of my life, the day I received my official cancer diagnosis, stage IV Hodgkin lymphoma (HL).
Leading up to this day, I was always a healthy, active young lady. I was 23 years old and eager to start this next phase in life. Exciting things were happening. We were fairly new homeowners, I had just changed jobs/occupations, and I married the love of my life in October.
David
On June 17, 2014, 12-year-old David Stim visited his pediatrician's office to have a routine school physical. During the exam, the nurse practitioner noticed an enlarged lymph node on the right side of his neck and surmised that it probably due to a reaction to something, as is almost always the case in pediatrics. Since David had been treated for strep throat the month before, there was not much cause for concern.
Graysen
Graysen was born in March 2017. She was born the day before my birthday and we often say that she was the greatest birthday present ever. She was such an easy-going baby - happy, curious, and sweet with a magnetic personality. She was seemingly healthy, happy and 21 months old when we shockingly learned she had leukemia in November 2018. It was a diagnosis we never saw coming and one we were forced to simultaneously digest, navigate and hit head on.
Lori
Lori’s journey to becoming a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) volunteer began back in 2002 through her own experience with being diagnosed with Myelofibrosis (MF). Lori had just embarked on a new job as a real estate agent to a new home builder when she began to feel extremely tired and have pain in her hands. She chalked up her sickness to a case of the flu; however, after deciding to go to her doctor, he recommended some blood work which came back showing high white counts. Her doctor referred her to an Oncologist who did a bone marrow biopsy.
Joshua
Joshua was a regular 11-year-old. He played multiple sports, was learning to play the flute in the school band, and enjoyed having fun with his friends. After a few weeks of a nagging sore throat and enlarged tonsils, we took Josh to see his primary care physician (PCP). They ran some tests and sent him home. No big deal, just a routine trip to the doctor’s office. Josh's PCP called the next day at 6:00 p.m. . . . on a Saturday. She said that she was worried about some of Josh's blood test results and recommended we go to an urgent care or emergency room for further checks.
Myles
I’ve always known that I wanted a career in sports in some capacity. My dream since I was in the third grade has been to become a professional football player, but I also was taught the reality of that dream. When you’re little of course you just want to be what you want to be, but as you get older you start to learn what can be in your reach and what the true reality is. As I grew older, I started to think about life after high school football and even college football, if I am blessed with that opportunity.
William
Hi, my name is William Yank and I am a 23-year-old, three-time leukemia survivor from Indiana. My story begins at the end of my junior year of college. I had just secured an internship in Washington D.C and was excited to finally spend a summer on my own. The summer started off pretty rough. I struggled to find affordable housing in D.C, I had no idea how the transportation system worked, and food was twice as expensive as compared to Indiana. Not to mention, I was only 20-years-old having fun was next to impossible.
Babette
My journey with multiple myeloma (MM) began at 42.
