My Contest Entry (the long version)

Hi everyone!

I am in a contest to be the Detroit Tigers Honorary Bat Girl 2011. I entered this contest in honor of my amazing mother who beat breast cancer back in 2006. Please read my story below and vote for me! Thank you so much!

Please click here to vote!

*************************************************************************

It's hard to describe something as complicated as breast cancer in only 900 characters, so I decided to post a longer version of the story on this blog for you all to read! Here it is...


In the fall of 2006 as I was about to begin my high school senior year, my mom's mammogram came back abnormal. The biopsy revealed something I could have never imagined... at 45 years old, she had breast cancer. So as I started my last year of high school, my mom was just beginning her battle with cancer.

In October, I was nominated for Homecoming Court, and just days after having her mastectomy, my mother was there with my father too, cheering me on at the pep rally and walking me out onto the football field to be crowned Homecoming Princess.

As the winter came, I donned a hat over my wild, highlighted hair, while my mother pulled on a wig as her hair fell out from the chemotherapy treatments. In December, I was taking antibiotics for constant tonsillitis that finally resulted in a tonsillectomy. My mom was taking capsules for her nausea and vomiting, injections for her low blood counts, and a myriad of other drugs to ward off the terrible side effects her body was suffering. She ended up having a hysterectomy.

In February, I took a big step towards my beginning my college career when I was informed I had earned a scholarship to the Raabe College of Pharmacy at Ohio Northern University. My mother took a big step toward finishing her fight with cancer when the doctor informed her that she was finally cancer free.

This fall 2011 will mark 5 years since my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and I am so happy to say she has been in remission since completing her treatments and surgeries. My mother is such a blessing to anyone she meets. She is the most generous and caring person I have ever known, and I owe so much of my own success to her, for teaching me to love others and to show compassion for people.

In two years, I will be a pharmacist, and I will encounter many others who are also fighting cancer. Thanks to my mother, I will know first hand what they are going through and be able to empathize with them. Thanks to my education, I will be able to help them through their treatments, step-by-step, drug-by-drug. That is how I will “go to bat against cancer.”

It would be such an incredible experience to be the 2011 Honorary Bat Girl to celebrate my mom for Mother’s Day. Detroit Tigers games are one of the things I look forward to the most every spring. I’ve grown up going to Tigers games, and my family has held season tickets. My mom even went to Tigers games while she was going through chemo! If that’s not fan loyalty, I don’t know what is.