Inspirational Stories

My name is Alana, and I’m 17 years old. Here is my story. On June 29, 2021, I was out having dinner with my family, and my smartwatch told me that my heart rate was really high. So, after we got done with dinner, we went to the ER. There they told me that they had found a mass in my chest and that I needed to be transferred to the children's hospital in Austin, Texas. They did some bloodwork, and then they noticed the swollen lymph node in my neck. That’s when they did the biopsy, and it was confirmed the next day that I had classic Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). That same day they put a PICC line in my arm and started chemotherapy the next day. The mass in my chest was closing off my lung, and they said it was almost like my lung was a straw. I went through six months of chemotherapy, and on November 5, 2021, I was officially cancer-free!