Our next guest was just 16 when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Recently, her community through a surprise parade on the way
to her last chemo treatment.
Take a look at this.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Good luck, Mercy.
There's people behind me.
Oh my God.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Thank you.
I love it.
Oh.
From Seattle, Washington, please welcome, Mercy Haub.
Hi.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, Mercy, thank you so much for being here.
It's great to meet you.
You look like you're just beaming right now.
How are you feeling?
Oh, 100%.
I'm feeling so good.
I'm feeling normal, which is not something
I've been able to really say about my life for the last five
months.
So yeah, so excited for this interview.
And the sun's out shining.
It's a great day.
Yes, it is a great day.
That video is-- I mean, when you're looking at that,
you're driving down and you can see there's a lot of people.
But I heard it was like 500 people that showed up.
I mean, did you expect anything like that?
No, I woke up that morning, and I was so grumpy and tired,
and I did not want to go to chemo.
And then, I came out, and there was my car,
and it was decorated.
And I was so happy, and that made the day a little better.
And I was not expecting anything more, but then,
as we drove up to my high school--
I lived really close to my high school--
there were these people, and I was just overwhelmed,
mind blown, just made the day instantly fantastic.
And then we just kept driving, and there
were just more and more people.
And I couldn't believe my eyes.
It was-- I just felt like I was bubbling over.
It was amazing.
Well, clearly, a lot of people love you.
I mean, that's why they did that.
And I can see why learning about you today--
you, before being diagnosed, were actually already helping
to fight against cancer.
Explain to people what you did shortly
before you were diagnosed.
Yeah, so when I was seven, my best friend's
father was diagnosed with cancer,
and that was such a hard thing to watch-- this disease that I
really didn't know anything about,
at that time, ripped these people I love apart.
And so you know, that launched my interest
to look into cancer.
And I found that it was really fascinating
to my science-loving side, so I started learning more.
I did science camps.
And then, just last year, I did a fundraising campaign
for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
And I set my goal at $30,000.
I said, hey, if we raise that much, I'm
going to shave my head and donate
the hair to Wigs for Kids.
And we exceeded that amount, and I shaved my head two weeks
or the day before school started.
And yeah, it was really ironic, I
guess, to get that diagnosis once I'd
done all that work for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Yeah.
Yeah, the fact that you shaved your head--
that's incredible.
So what is the hardest part of the diagnosis been?
Oh my gosh.
I mean, it's such an emotionally and physically loaded
experience--
not being able to see my friends,
you know, I had to FaceTime them to tell them.
And so having to try to connect with them
and show them that I'm here, and this sucks,
but I'm fine through it.
And you know, I was only able to have
one parent in the hospital, and just
the pandemic really kind of made this such a unique and
difficult experience.
And now, you're playing heads up on your bed.
You're done with treatment.
And now you want to be an oncologist when you grow up,
right?
Yeah, so I'm officially in remission.
It feels so good to be able to say that.
Yeah.
And yeah, so I'm really excited to see
how this experience can kind of help me empathize
with my future patients.
And I already have this passion for this cause,
but this would 100% just add on top of it.
And I'm only a month out of treatment,
so I don't really know how cancer is going
to change me in the long run.
But I really do think that--
I had cancer, and I kicked its butt
like that kind of gives me some confidence in how I'll
be able to grow as a person because of this
and also grow as a scientist and help people in the future.
Exactly.
You have a great story.
You're a great inspiration for anybody
that you're going to possibly have to treat.
All right, we're going to take a break and more
with Mercy after this.
My producer told me that you watch the show
during treatment.
That helped you.
Yeah.
I was really behind schoolwork-wise.
I was missing over half of my classes.
And so I would have a lot of buildup of schoolwork.
And so I would have all these days
where I would try to work through it as much as I could
and work for hours on end.
And as we've been told by experts and whatnot
that it's not a good idea to do four hours of work straight,
so I would pop on to YouTube and watch an Ellen Show.
And it would just be so inspirational
and restore my energy and outlook on life.
And it would definitely help me kind of get
that push to finish the necessary schoolwork, so yeah.
And you saw that picture of me playing Heads Up, so--
Yeah.
That makes me-- Mercy, that makes me very, very happy.
So I want to send you a whole bunch of swag.
So here's some stuff we're going to send you first of all.
Thanks, Andy.
You're welcome.
He's always running.
He doesn't walk.
So we're going to send you a whole bunch of t-shirts,
some really cute new stuff that we just got in.
And you're going to come to the show
when we're able to have human beings here.
So you'll come to the show.
And let me just move this really cute Ellen hat right here
just because it's real cute.
And then we're going to also--
Shutterfly wants to help celebrate this moment.
They want to give you $10,000.
Oh my gosh.