Gators Beat Blood Cancer Team: 

Lily Gardiner

Lila Herndon

Caroline Hertzberg

Mary Kate Hogan

Molly Murphy

Natalie Peoples

Maria Merz

Many of us have been affected by some sort of cancer whether it was directly or through family or friends. This year I was given the opportunity and honor participate in the 2019 Students of the Year program, a seven-week initiative in which select high school students from around the country participate in a fundraising competition to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I am proud to be raising critical dollars for the LLS honored hero, Meaghan Kilner, who goes to Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart with me and is in remission from lymphoma. Each dollar is a vote. The candidate team that raises the most money at the end of the seven weeks is named Student(s) of the Year. Our mission is to not only raise the most money but also to bring attention to blood cancers like leukemia, which is the most common form of cancer in children and teens. I have been personally affected with Leukemia through Meaghan and my dad. In 2012, my Dad was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. After two rounds of chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, and months spent in the hospital, my Dad achieved remission and he just marked his sixth anniversary cancer free. It is very important to me to fight for a cure for blood cancers, because seeing someone so dear to you go through something as life-changing as Leukemia gives you a different perspective. It was a difficult time for him and my whole family, and I still have vivid memories from that year running around the hallways of Johns Hopkins with my little sister or playing Apples to Apples with the nurses. Which is why I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to fight for a cure for blood cancer so people like my Dad and Meaghan never have to go through something so awful again.

Since the early 1960s, five-year survival rates for many blood cancer patients have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. And many LLS supported therapies not only help blood cancer patients but are helping patients with other cancers and serious diseases. In fact, drugs first approved for blood cancers are now approved to treat patients with stomach cancers, skin cancers, and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

We really are changing the face of blood cancer!

All donations are greatly appreciated and are tax deductible. They'll not only support LLS-funded research but will help provide critical information and support for patients, and support advocacy for laws to ensure patients can access the care and treatments they need.

Please share our website with your friends and family so we can be able to reach our fundraising goal.

On behalf of blood cancer patients everywhere, thank you for your support!

For more information about LLS, please visit www.lls.org.

For the cure,

Megan Toner

Gators Beat Blood Cancer