Julianna can find a way forward no matter the setback. Meeting Julianna is like taking a swig of Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting Drink—her vivacious personality and delight for life elevates everyone around her. She just makes you happier, which is extraordinary given that the last two and a half years of her life enduring leukemia would be enough to sink any mere mortal. Not Julianna. She swallowed the tough reality of her diagnosis, the side effects from treatment, and the loss of loved ones to come out with a renewed respect for life and commitment to help others.
In middle school, Julianna was your average kid… if being average meant starting an entrepreneurial hamster breeding business and enlisting clients in between classes. Okay, nothing was average about Julianna. With the support of her family who instilled in her that she was capable of anything, Julianna honed an ability to think outside of the box and strive for her goals. Starting high school, Julianna wanted to play soccer. She put in the time to practice, running drills and fighting through back pain, fatigue, and breathing difficulties. Because that’s what athletes do, right? Julianna worked so hard to train herself, coming home and falling asleep on the couch as soon as she stumbled through the door.
As part of a routine sports physical, Julianna completed an exam with a physician which revealed a heart murmur. And then the slew of testing began. She was diagnosed with low iron, but it was not until two weeks later while visiting family in Pennsylvania that a medical crisis prompted a trip to the emergency department. Poor needle phobic Julianna endured blood draws and a CT scan before learning that all of her symptoms were the cause of leukemia, specifically T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Doctors gravely communicated with Julianna and her family that inside Julianna lived a thyroid tumor, leaking fluid into her chest and placing burden on her heart. To save her life, Julianna would need an emergency procedure at another hospital, requiring her to be airlifted in snowy conditions, without her family by her side. Julianna told herself “I am not afraid of heights. I am not going to start now!” She remembers looking down from the air at the black river below punctuated by large chunks of sharp floating ice blocks. She recalls being struck by its harshness and beauty, words that would later define her own winding illness journey to come.
Taylor Swift embodies more for Julianna than Midnights and Folklore, for it was the soundtrack in the background of the procedure where strange doctors used needles to draw fluid from her chest while she had to remain sitting up without anesthesia. Many memories are foggy from the time of her early diagnosis and treatment, but when Julianna was transferred to UF Health and Dr. Slayton met her in a hallway, enfolding her hands in his and diagnosing her mobility issues as chemotherapy induced neuropathy, both Julianna and her mother remember finally feeling safe. Chemo was tough, especially the loss of her hair. To cope with the adjustment, Julianna wrote a poem entitled, “A Poem to My Hair”:
They told me you would leave me.
I crossed my fingers hoping not.
They said you could fall out a little,
Or you could fall out a lot.
I couldn’t tell at first,
But finally at last,
I saw clumps of you in my brush;
I had to put you in the past.
I wanted to hang on.
I didn’t want to let you go.
I even tried to cut you short,
But in the end I know.
Then I missed you long hair.
I saw the bald spot growing.
I didn’t have much to spare,
But I just kept hoping.
So I took a look in the mirror and I cried to get you back.
But you just wouldn’t grow.
You were all over my back,
And my bed,
And my pants,
Everywhere but my head.
I cried and I cried until I couldn’t stand the dread.
I told Mom to grab the scissors,
Grandma to grab the sheet.
I sat down in the chair not knowing what’s good for me.
I watched you fall fast,
But not 1 tear did I shed.
Instead I laughed and I laughed as you fell from my head.
I felt it and felt it,
So light and clean.
I missed you so much.
But you don’t define me.
Then one day I looked,
And one day I saw,
Tiny little sprouts of hair,
Only 2 cm tall.
I smiled at that.
And I smile still.
Because I know you will come back.
I just know you will.
Julianna coped with cancer by finding “tiny sprouts of hope.” She invested in relationships, engaging with her infusion nurses Angie and Ariel, her physical therapist Analese, social worker, Daimian, CNA, Piero, and Emily and her crazy band of Streetlight volunteers. She enjoyed talking to people to pass the time, in and out of sleeping during hospitalizations. She also made friends with several other people enduring cancer treatment, which provided both a source of camaraderie, as well as heartbreak. Julianna wrote a poem inspired by a dear friend with cancer:
She’s in my heart down deep.
I’ll ask the Lord to keep her
Down here on Earth with me.
I know sometimes He calls the best
And puts their tired souls to rest.
For now she lives right in my chest.
I thank the lord that I am blessed.
Julianna now finishes her years of cancer treatment on the brink of her senior year of high school. She describes the life transition as “going from a sippy cup to drinking out of a tall glass.” With the end of treatment arrives new challenges, like choosing colleges, getting her driver’s license, and starting a job. She hopes to use her cancer experience to benefit the lives of others, possibly pursuing a career in Child Life.
As she thinks back on what she has learned over the last few years, she believes that “every day is a blessing.” For new patients beginning cancer treatment, she encourages “stay positive. Keep your head up. Mental health affects you. Don’t let the hard times keep you down. I could still go on a walk, or sit on the porch and listen to music I liked. You can always find something you like to do.” Julianna also endorses laughing as a coping mechanism. Even if it meant calling up the number to a pharmaceutical company on the back of her pill bottle and engaging them in sarcastic debates, Julianna found humor where most people wouldn’t look. Life may not turn out the way you plan, but there is power in your response. She writes in her poem, “The Battle”:
My legs might not work right and my heart a little less
But that won’t stop me from winning now, I’m the warrior princess.
As Julianna takes her last chemo, we all pause to commend her on the strength, spunk, and class in which fought over the last two and a half years. As she strikes the bell in honor of her cancer journey and for her family and friends who she continues to carry in her heart, the sound will signify meaning and hope to come. Let freedom ring.
