{"id":9556,"date":"2017-10-26T13:32:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T19:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=9556"},"modified":"2017-12-01T12:26:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T18:26:47","slug":"using-stories-from-the-past-to-change-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2017\/10\/26\/using-stories-from-the-past-to-change-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Stories from the Past to Change the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Junior Samantha Allen was sitting in her third-grade classroom when she was called to the school\u2019s office. When she arrived in the office, her mother was there, prepared to take her to the hospital. e doctor had just called, and Allen\u2019s blood work had tested positive for cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 9; I didn\u2019t know what was going on,\u201d Allen said. \u201cIt was a very long day … I knew (the doctor) was discussing something with my parents \u2014 it was very serious. But later that night I got brought to an in-patient room, and I didn\u2019t really know what was going on. at\u2019s when they told us the final diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know exactly what it was because I didn\u2019t really know what cancer was,\u201d Allen said. \u201cI knew it was something bad, and then I had to spend like a whole week in the hospital for them to kind of analyze the situation and gure out the treatment they needed to give me.\u201d Allen underwent chemotherapy and radiation for approximately one year before entering remission. She had both in-patient and out-patient treatments and continued to attend school, though she said she felt uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt was hard because I definitely became\u00a0a lot more self-conscious about myself because I (was) a bald 9-year-old and the steroids I was on made my cheeks look really fat,\u201d Allen said. \u201cIt was just di cult going to school looking like I did and feeling weak … basically you\u2019re in a really vulnerable state.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 40,000 children undergo treatment for cancer each year, and there are approximately 375,000 adult survivors of childhood cancers in the U.S., according to CureSearch Along with Allen, juniors Hannah Mosher and Cooper Mosely are two of the thousands who have survived childhood cancer.<\/p>\n

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Junior Hannah Mosher holds a photo of herself from when she battled thyroid cancer in high school.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mosher found a lump one her neck while she was sitting in her ninth-grade history class. She later learned she had papillary thyroid cancer and underwent surgery to remove her thyroid and lymph nodes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt just kind of appeared one day, this lump on my lymph node,\u201d Mosher said. \u201cI was very scared, especially to go into surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mosher feared being put under anesthesia and never waking up from the surgery, but she said the worst part of treatment was the low-iodine diet she was required to eat for her radiation. During the summer, Mosher learned two small cancerous nodes remain in her lungs, but is thankful that they do not warrant medical treatment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHonestly, I was grateful that I kind of got this form of cancer over another form just because it\u2019s much more treatable compared to something like leukemia or a variety of other cancers out here,\u201d Mosher said. \u201cI kind of consider myself fortunate, and I don\u2019t really think about it that much. It\u2019s just kind of something that happened in my body. I don\u2019t feel sorry for myself or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

A double cancer survivor, Mosely was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma at age 10, which reoccurred at 13. He said the second diagnosis was more disheartening than nerve-wracking because he was aware of the difficult road ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201c(At 13), I understood a lot more than I did the first time, so I was more prepared, but I was not as scared because I knew it was going to happen,\u201d Mosely said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mosely said he was rst diagnosed with stage 2A cancer on Valentines Day in 2008. He entered remission after six cycles of chemotherapy and radiation. In 2010, he discovered the cancer had returned at the more severe 4B stage.<\/p>\n

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Junior Cooper Mosely is a two-time survivor of Hodgkin lymphoma. He is now considered cancer free.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI just knew I had to get through it because if I don\u2019t fight, I die, so you only have that ( fighting) mindset when you go in,\u201d Mosely said. \u201cFighting for your life is something extremely hard to describe because we don\u2019t know\u00a0anything besides our life. Death is basically irrelevant to us right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mosely had to stay in in-patient\u00a0care for 22 days. His fondest mem- ories are of befriending other child patients and friends visiting him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cPersonally, my point of view as a cancer survivor, even when you\u2019re going through treatment: you don\u2019t want to be treated differently,\u201d Mosely said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want people bending over backwards for us to do something. We want to do stuff on our own and feel good about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mosher and Allen have both chosen majors with hopes to help others who are diagnosed with cancer. Mosher, a biology major, plans to become a physician\u2019s assistant; and Allen, a child life major, wants to work in the eld of pediatric oncology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI want to bring joy and hope to kids who are in a similar situation, or even in a worse situation, and just let them know there is hope,\u201d Allen said. \u201dYou can survive (and) there is a possibility to survive. Even if they say you only have so long to live, I want to help them make the best they can out of what they have left.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Junior Samantha Allen was sitting in her third-grade classroom when she was called to the school\u2019s office. When she arrived in the office, her mother was there, prepared to take…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14702,"featured_media":9558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556","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\/14702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9556"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9919,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9556\/revisions\/9919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}