Warrior Sam
Introducing Warrior Samantha
Sam was diagnosed in October of 2016 with T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This
diagnosis was a complete shock to all of us. Through the grace of god and with tremendous
support from our friends, family, and community, we spent the next year living in Seattle at the
Ronald McDonald House while Sam was being treated at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Over the course of that first year Sam’s immune system was essentially wiped out 95% of the
time due to the routine chemotherapy and steroid medicine given to her to combat the illness.
This lack of an adequate immune system necessitated her staying no more than a few miles
from the hospital. Life was not so easy. Except for a couple trips back to Wenatchee when her
immune system was boosted, she spent the majority of this first year in her room. Her mom
stayed with her a majority of the time and I (dad) came over when I could and sometimes
switched places with her so she could stay at home and see our son. It wasn’t an ideal
situation, but we felt very grateful that we had the help of others and that we lived so close to
a world class Children’s Hospital. For a while, this became our normal. As it stands now, Sam is
nearing the two year mark clear of medicine and cancer free. Her second year of treatment
meant weekly stays at the hospital on and off, but we were lucky enough to be able to come
home in between. Years 3 and now 4 required first monthly visits, then quarterly visits and as we
enter 2021, those visits will stretch to every 6 months. After seeing the impact of Cancer on so
many families, we are deeply grateful that Sam has progressed as hoped and expected.
Even though she has had success in her treatment she still had a lot of things in her path to
overcome. She was 12 years old when diagnosed, she lost her hair, multiple times. Her body
changed, her face would swell up, her body would ache, she lost too much weight, her
appetite changed. She kept great composure, even during the times she had to be fed with a
feeding tube because she couldn’t eat on her own. As a family we rallied around her, but even
that was difficult. We made friends with other families, we even watched some of these friends
we had made die. Sometimes we felt guilty that Sam’s treatment was going as expected,
when others had setback after setback. We had our own setbacks, but nothing as life
shattering as others had experienced. Sam’s life was put on hold and she missed her friends,
she missed our dogs at home. Before her diagnosis she was active in sports, especially
basketball. She is working hard at being able to play again but the 4 years she has missed and
was unable to play has made that path much more difficult.
As I said earlier, we were very fortunate in the support we received from the community. The
Brave Warrior Project Santa Photo fundraiser was one of those things. It’s one thing to be
supported by your friends, even your family, but events like this, where people you don’t even
know, or people that just heard about your situation are supporting you, well...simply put, it’s
humbling. The financial support made things much easier. We were able to stay nights in a
hotel when we couldn’t all fit in her room. There are so many other examples. The other thing
that these events did was they showed Sam how much people cared about her, and suddenly,
her getting better was bigger than just our family. She was able to feel all that support and that
part of it went a lot farther than the money.
As I said earlier, Sam is now cancer free and in her Sophomore year at WHS, she is doing well
with the online learning and she got her driver’s license. We are told she isn’t at any more risk
to COVID than anyone else but we are being very careful.