My experience with the Four Diamonds Fund and THON started in 2007, when I was a junior at Cumberland Valley High School in Mechanicsburg, Pa. I had never heard of THON, but many of my friends were involved in planning CV’s inaugural mini-THON, and they convinced me to go. After an awesome experience, I walked away from the 15-hour event with an entire list of things I thought we could do better. About a month later, I turned in my application for the 2008 committee.

 

Though I wasn’t originally chosen for a chair position like I had wanted, I jumped in wholeheartedly. Senior year was spent staying after school multiple times per week to work on mini-THON stuff. Spring came around, and our advisor gave us the opportunity to sign up for the trip to Penn State. Seeing THON in person was unlike anything I had ever experienced. From needing 12 tries to learn the line dance, to squeezing back tears during Family Hour, to the eruption in the BJC when the total was revealed, that first THON was something I’ll never forget.

 

On June 2, 2011, I came home from work and sat down in front of the TV. A few minutes later, I sneezed and felt a sharp, severe pain directly over my heart. In homage to Kindergarten Cop, I sent a text my friend: “My heart really hurts. I think it’s a tumor.” The response was not the “It’s not a too-mah!” I was hoping for, but a “shut up” instead. I stood up to go to my room, got to the bottom of the stairs, took a breath, and doubled over in pain. Driving to the urgent care clinic just a few miles from my house, for some reason all I could think of was what it would be like to need heart surgery.

 

I soon found out I wouldn’t have to worry about that. After a typical irregular EKG, the doctor decided it would be a good idea to do a chest x-ray just to be safe. When he walked back in the room 15 minutes later, his face had taken a more serious turn. He said that my chest x-ray was “abnormal” and told me not to waste any time getting to the emergency room—he’d call ahead. Lucky for me, I was in too much pain to be scared of anything. I went home, got my mom, and sent my friend another text: “But really. Maybe it’s a tumor.”

 

The next two and a half hours were spent in the ER in a room directly across from the nurse’s station. After sitting two hours with no pain medication and nothing having been done, all I wanted to do was leave. When they finally gave me pain medication and took me for a CT scan at 10 pm, I was just happy to feel some relief. At 1 am, the ER doctor came into my room and told us what the CT showed: there was a large mass in my chest near my heart and lungs. Once again, he had already done the work for us. He had scheduled an appointment with an oncologist at Hershey for the following Tuesday.