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<\/p>\n19-year old Phoenix Bridegroom will be starting her freshman year at Ball State University this upcoming fall, but school is something she didn\u2019t always have the opportunity to attend regularly. As a child, she battled leukemia multiple times and, as a result, was not always able to go to school.<\/p>\n
Bridegroom was first diagnosed with leukemia around the age of 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I was in the spring break of my kindergarten year,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Beacon Health confirmed the cancer diagnosis, Bridegroom was transported to Riley Hospital for Children so that it could be treated with the fullest capability. At the time, Bridegroom had so many brain bleeds that she had to be put into a coma to complete the transport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had so many brain bleeds that I was not stable enough to be transported by helicopter, so they had to put me in a coma to fly me over to Riley Children\u2019s in Indianapolis,\u201d Bridegroom said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the time, Bridegroom was too young to really comprehend what was going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The brain bleeds left Bridegroom unable to walk or speak. The cancer itself impacted Bridegroom\u2019s vision, at one point even fully blinding her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cancer had made me blind in both eyes and caused many small bleeds in my brain, which left me unable to walk or speak,\u201d she said. \u201cI went to physical and speech therapy to help me physically, and I had eye surgery to clear the blindness in my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cancer also left Bridegroom with a very fragile immune system. As a result, she often had to stay secluded to avoid overexposure to germs, which meant she could not go to school on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring those couple of years, I tried to do as much school, music, and art therapy as possible just to make me feel like a normal kid,\u201d Bridegroom said.<\/p>\n
Just a few years after her original diagnosis while in remission, Bridegroom relapsed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was in remission I relapsed at the age of 8,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She relapsed a second time when she was 10. Shortly after that, Bridegroom underwent experimental treatment for leukemia.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring that time a children\u2019s hospital in Philadelphia was doing a study to engineer cells to kill the cancer in my body,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was called Cart T Cell Therapy and I had to live in Philadelphia for two months going through the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The therapy was successful and today Bridegroom is completely cancer-free.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since then I have been cancer free for the last eight years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Recently Bridegroom completed her Girl Scouts Gold Award Project. She created benches at a local Chesterton park that are meant to spark conversation to create friendships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are four benches all together with four different questions,\u201d Bridegroom said. \u201cThey are \u2018What is your favorite activity,\u2019\u2018What is your favorite color,\u2019 \u2018What is your favorite animal,\u2019 and \u2018What is your favorite flower.\u2019 The purpose of the benches is for children to have a place to make new friends by asking these questions and develop long lasting relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bridegroom has overcome a lot over the course of her life. Her battle with cancer has not stopped her and she continues to grow and fine to her community, most recently in the form of her friendship benches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"19-year old Phoenix Bridegroom will be starting her freshman year at Ball State University this upcoming fall, but…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":173790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-173789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}