Meet Lucy: 2024 Scholar
Our College Scholars receive a financial scholarship to help with academic expenses, and each scholar commits to undertaking a volunteer project of their choosing related to childhood cancer advocacy, with support and mentorship from the Children's Cancer Cause team.
Lucy’s Story
Lucy was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma just before her second birthday. During a family visit, Lucy’s mom was taking a lot of pictures of the cousins playing together. Lucy’s uncle noticed something unusual in the pictures: a strange white flash in the toddler’s left eye.
“My parents brought these pictures to an optometrist, who opened his clinic on a Sunday to examine me. He saw that I had multiple tumors in both eyes,” she shared with us. “By Wednesday, I was on the pediatric oncology floor of the children’s hospital in a city three hours away, getting the official diagnosis of bilateral retinoblastoma, with 12 small tumors in my right eye, and more concerningly, one large tumor that completely filled my left eye, and was making its way to my brain.”
“This was the beginning of my cancer journey,” says Lucy. “I have no memories of life without cancer. My earliest memory is being in a bright, artificially lit room. Later I understood that this was a hospital operating room. This operating room was one that I visited every three weeks for many years.”
Treatment for the very young Lucy was grueling. It destroyed her teeth, burned her skin, and made her throw up and lose her hair.
Her left eye had to be removed.
”Despite spending my childhood years in a potentially trauma-inducing place, my medical team did all they could to make the best of my situation,” says Lucy, recalling wagon rides around the hospital, stickers for every procedure, and treats after surgeries. “There was a magical toy room that I could visit if I got tired of my hospital stays and special art days where I could go and make cool art projects.”
Lucy was in active treatment until her seventh birthday, and she’s had several surgeries to update her prosthetic eye as her skull grew.
She continues to have regular visits with her pediatric ophthalmologist, oncologist, and ocularist team, regular scans of her eye and orbits, MRIs of her brain, and tests to make sure she stays cancer-free because she’s at high risk for secondary cancers.
Despite these challenges, she remains optimistic about the future. In the fall of 2024, Lucy will begin college at Utah State University where she plans to study human biology or public health.
Lucy’s Advocacy Project
For her volunteer project, Lucy plans to create a campus club for students who are cancer patients or survivors, to help build a sense of belonging, support, and community. The club will welcome anyone with a passion for improving the lives of young people with cancer, including family members and friends of those battling cancer.
“My vision for this club would be to have monthly meetings and events where club members could get to know each other, share experiences, engage in fun activities, listen to guest speakers, participate in service projects and host cancer awareness activities,” Lucy says.
She also plans to create a “DIY guide” with a toolkit of resources for those who want to replicate the concept on their own college campus.
We’ll share Lucy’s media kit here when it’s ready!