Hello! My name is Irelyn Mulvaney and I am 2021 student candidate for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Here are some pictures for you all to get to know me!

Here I am at last year's LLS Student of the Year Gala. I was on a team with the Canyon Crest Academy's Associated Student Body members and we raised over $12,000. This year Ryan and I lead our team. We still have many of the same members on our team but we have been able to expand to include a lot of amazing, passionate people and we are so excited to see all of the amazing things that we can collectively accomplish.

This is my dad and I, when I was around 7, rollerskating.

This is definitely an older picture but here I am (8th grade!!) with my mom, sister, and grandmother. My mother is a cancer survivor and inspired me to undergo fundraising for this important cause. 

This is the last picture I have with my Grandpa Vannie before he unfortunately lost his battle with cancer. He also inspired me to raise money to find a cure for cancer to prevent future losses for other families.

Here is a fun digital art project I did featuring my friends and I at an Asoociated Student Body banquet (before COVID-19). 

 

The Student of the Year Campaign means much more to me than just a competition amongst my peers. When I was a child my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She was forced into a position where she had to prepare herself for the possibility of death. She had two toddlers who she wasn't sure she would ever see grow and this helped motivate her to fight for her life. My mother was extremely lucky. She beat the odds and was able to recover but it took years of chemotherapy and surgeries to do so. Not everyone gets the same second chance at life. My grandfather Vannie Graves had a long and draining fight against cancer/alzheimer's and ended up dying two years ago. It hit my family and I extremely hard to have to go through the process of watching a loved one slowly die for the second time. Thankfully my mom was able to recover and gain her health back, but my Papa Vannie wasn't as lucky. Anyone who has been impacted by cancer knows nothing is guaranteed until a cure is found. This is why I am so passionate about this fundraising campaign. At any moment after treatment, a cancer survivor could have a recurrence and have to go through Chemotherapy again. With a cure, people around the world would be guaranteed their life (something more important than money or materialistic objects). Yes, my grandfather was very unlucky when he died from cancer even when things were 'looking better'. Yes, my mom was incredibly lucky to survive cancer when she had a 70% chance of dying. This is something that shouldn't be so heavily based on unpredictable factors-this is human life on the line. Let's work together to make surviving cancer not based on luck but based on a full-proof cure. The only way for this to occur is by coming together and donating to the people searching for a cure. Any donations possible would be appreciated to help aid scientist's efforts in turning the cure for cancer from a hope to a reality.

Thank you for visiting my fundraising page, welcome!

I encourage you to join me in supporting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) by making a donation to my fundraising campaign. By donating to LLS, you support the many facets of LLS’s mission work from investing in groundbreaking research, providing education and support to patients, and advocating at the state and federal level for legislation to help those living with cancer. My appreciation for your support cannot be overstated — each and every dollar donated to LLS brings us closer to our goal to end blood cancer and makes an impact for cancer patients and their families.

As a global leader in the fight to end cancer, LLS is committed to doing more for blood cancer patients and families than any organization in the world. LLS’s signature fundraising campaigns drive critical support for its mission, including a nearly $1.3 billion investment in cutting edge cancer research worldwide since it was founded in 1949. Since the 1960s, survival rates for many blood cancer patients have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled.

Every facet of LLS’s mission – research, education and support, and policy and advocacy – work in harmony to put blood cancer patients and their families first. LLS has helped millions impacted by cancer throughout its more than 70-year history, even funding breakthrough blood cancer research to advance lifesaving treatments and cures that is now helping patients with other cancers and diseases. That is why at LLS we say that beating cancer is in our blood.

Please visit my website as often as you can and share it with everyone you know who would also like to join us in the fight against cancer. Together, we have the power, the passion and the resolve to achieve a world without blood cancer. All donations are tax-deductible.

On behalf of cancer patients and their families everywhere, I sincerely thank you for your support!

For more information about LLS, please visit lls.org