{"id":3911,"date":"2010-03-25T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:56","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"young-teen-battles-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2010\/03\/25\/young-teen-battles-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Young teen battles cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Gary Ryan Griffin<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Wilson is a returning freshman at Harding University, but only seven years before coming to Harding he started having sharp pains in his right leg and knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>After three doctors diagnosed the same ailment \u2013 that his discomfort was simply growing pains \u2014 Wilson was sent to one more doctor who told him something different.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>He had cancer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Wilson was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a form of cancer that is most commonly found in teenage boys. The doctors found the tumor in the right midsection of Wilson&#8217;s body, and it was so close to his spine that surgery was too risky.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>For the next six months, Wilson underwent chemotherapy, and two of those months included additional radiation treatment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>At home in between treatments, Wilson spent his time either on the couch or in bed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I broke a sweat even getting up to go to the bathroom,&#8221; Wilson said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>His parents, extended family members and even elders of his church prayed on his behalf. After six months of the treatments, the doctors said the tumor was reduced to one-quarter the size that it was, and it was dormant.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>For the next month, Wilson spent one hour a day in physical therapy due to the amount of muscle loss in his right leg. He said he looks at that time in his life as a growing experience.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>There were times during those months when Wilson said he did not understand why God let this happen to him, but he came to the conclusion that &#8220;to live is Christ and to die is gain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>As a young Christian boy, Wilson was tested more than a lot of people go through a lifetime, but he said he thanks God for getting him through that time in his life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Today, Wilson&#8217;s tumor remains dormant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Gary Ryan Griffin Ryan Wilson is a returning freshman at Harding University, but only seven years before coming to Harding he started having sharp pains in his right&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}