Adults

I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in April 2009. I was so devastated. The first thing that got me through was a friend who had just won his battle with leukemia. I hadn't seen him in about a year, but he popped up all of a sudden that day and gave me hope.

Dogs have always played a major role in my life. My story follows a woman's journey through cancer, twice in 10 years. Each time my dogs discovered my cancers, while I was busy treating theirs. The love and life lessons we shared over the years with each other and God made us survivors.

May of 2017, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma following my 19th birthday. The news of cancer shook my reality as I’d just began establishing my life. I was forced to give up my independence and lean on my community.

In the beginning, when I was processing my cancer diagnosis, I kept asking myself, “why me?”. That after all these years I worked hard to better my health, eating the right foods and working out. But in the world of cancer it didn’t matter, this disease couldn’t have recognize all I’ve done, and I was chosen. I am now part of their world, and how I travel through my journey will depend on me.

In March 2019, I began feeling off...I didn't know what it was. I thought perhaps it was a loss of a relationship that broke me to my core, or the fact that an old friend had asked me to be a kidney donor for someone I had never known. I had agreed to be tested to see if I was a possible match.

My story begins almost 24 years ago in 1996, when I was diagnosed with cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Back then, there was no cure for CLL except for a bone marrow transplant (BMT), but that procedure only had a survival rate of 50%, not very attractive odds. My prognosis was I had anywhere from six to 15 years without a BMT.