Training for a half-marathon during her senior year of high school, Samantha felt healthy and strong, but kept experiencing excessive sweating. Her pediatrician conducted several tests, including checking her blood for markers of cancer. Eventually, specialists at Children’s Hospital Colorado performed more diagnostic scans and found a softball-sized tumor behind Samantha’s heart, as well as a few golf-ball sized tumors along her neck.  It was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which helps the body fight infection. Sam, as she is known, was in shock.

While most of her fellow classmates were enjoying their senior year, Sam had surgery to remove part of the largest tumor, and then started chemotherapy. The chemotherapy caused many side effects, including her hair falling out in chunks, losing functionality in her hands and legs, extreme nausea, thinking and memory loss, and pain. She participated in several cancer research studies through Children’s Colorado and also received care from the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders’ (CCBD) mental health team to address the psychosocial challenges that accompany a cancer diagnosis, especially for teenagers.

As her hair fell out, Sam started to embrace the challenges she was facing, including dying her hair purple, the shade that symbolizes awareness for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She actively participated in her care and tried to be strong not only for herself, but for all the younger CCBD patients she encountered. Now, Sam is not only a role model for other oncology patients, but she’s also an actual model. She walked the runway in the Fall 2023 Denver Fashion Week while in remission, proudly displaying her very short hair. After a long journey, she is cancer free and attending college at the University of California San Diego.