Meet 2021 Scholar Molly
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.
Molly’s Story
Molly, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 17, the summer before her senior year of high school.
“Before my diagnosis, I had never known anyone who had thyroid cancer - let alone a young person!” says Molly, who had enlarged lymph nodes in her neck and had been feeling extremely fatigued. She was originally diagnosed with mono but when she didn’t improve, her doctor ordered an ultrasound.
“That’s when they found the cancer that had taken over my thyroid and 56 lymph nodes.”
Today, Molly is in remission after undergoing surgery and radioactive iodine treatment at MD Anderson in Houston. She is studying Animal Science at Texas Tech University.
Molly’s Advocacy Project
For her College Scholars project, Molly is helping educate other young people about thyroid cancer with a campus-wide “Check your Neck” awareness campaign. She hopes to distribute thyroid cancer information at campus health fairs, bring an endocrinologist to campus to speak at an event, and organize a thyroid cancer dialogue within her sorority.
“I would like to encourage ‘Check your Neck’ to be just as common as breast checks,” says Molly. “Because of my own thyroid problem, my older sister knew what to look out for on her neck and doctors found cysts that need to monitored closely.”
In April of 2022, Molly hosted a Check Your Neck booth at a women’s night at the campus rec center, where she handed out Children’s Cancer Cause mirrors as reminders to conduct self-checks. “It was so fun to get to talk to the women who came to my table,” says Molly. “A lot of them didn’t know where the thyroid was or how important it is to check your neck for nodules. I showed them how to check. People were really interested to know that thyroid cancer patients are mostly women.”
Before the event, Molly researched the statistics and current best practices for self-checks. “I felt like we helped some of those women because a lot of them said they'd start checking their necks for any changes and had no idea to do it before.”
“When caught early, thyroid cancer is very treatable. That is why raising awareness is so important.”
Thyroid cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers among both adolescents and young adults.
Thyroid cancer rates among women in their 20s are more than five times higher than men.
Source: Siegel RL, Miller KD, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2020. CA Cancer J Clin. 2020;70:7‐30.