(upbeat electronic music)
- Whoa
my god!
This is madness.
Hello everyone, a few months ago I went
to Cohen Children's Medical Center to film
a 10 minute photo challenge.
When I was there, I met a very inspiring young woman.
This is her story.
After I was finished shooting the photo challenge,
a nurse told me there was a young woman,
a dancer, who was on her fourth round of chemotherapy
and really wanted to meet me but she was too sick
to leave her room. So I went to her.
- Hi.
- Hi, how are you doing? - I'm good.
You're very tall. - I'm tall.
Well you're sitting down though.
- Around nine months ago, I was just going away
for my first year of college
and the whole time I was there, I was sick.
Eventually it was like I was fainting in the shower
and I'm the type of person that I'm like oh no,
it's fine, ya know, whatever, not gonna worry about it.
I couldn't even stand up.
I had to tell my mom to come and pick me up
from school 'cause I thought I had mono.
So we went to the hospital, a doctor at St. Joseph's
on Long Island came to the room
and it was the disease doctor and she said,
"You know, it's probably just mono, you get some
"of these side effects with mono, you'll probably
"be able to leave soon."
As she's walking out, the blood doctor walks in and says,
"We think it's leukemia," and my mom and I were like,
"No, you're wrong, there's no way,"
we did not, it was like, just denial.
From day one I knew I was gonna be okay
'cause that's just how I am, I just knew it
and I was just more worried about my family's reactions
and how worried they would be and stuff and that was hard.
- As a parent, it touches me deeply to see sick kids
and I'm struggling to figure out how exactly
to communicate with her.
I brought you a book.
- A book?
- My Dancers Among Us book.
- Oh cool, yeah. - And I wanted to give it
to you, okay, I want to sign it for you.
- Thank you.
- And she has an incredible amount of strength
and determination and I go from being concerned
and nervous to being optimistic and excited to meet her.
And when you're feeling better enough,
I would love to meet up with you
and take some real pictures, does that sound good?
- Yes. - That sounds great.
- This picture you sent me on Instagram,
that was pretty cool.
Do you feel strong enough to be able to do that kind
of thing right now or are you a little weak?
- No I could do that.
- Could you? - Yeah.
- And go.
This is one of the coolest photos I maybe have ever taken.
- Everyday I was in my hospital room,
I dreamed of the beach.
- I knew that when we finally worked together,
it had to be at the beach.
(upbeat music)
- It's scary, I had hair down to hair and we had cut it
but still to have just pieces of your hair coming out,
it's scary especially for a girl.
So my cousin who went to beauty school,
she would come and we did basically everything
that we ever wanted to do to my hair but were too scared to
'cause I would always dye my hair, cut it, did fun things
so I had purple hair for a while, pink hair.
I had a lot of anxiety building up to the day
that it started to come out
and that night was probably the worst night of my life.
The most traumatic part is when it first starts coming out
then we just decided, we're like, no, we're gonna shave it,
I'm not gonna deal with seeing my hair all over the floor
and all over the bed so after that,
I never cried about it again.
Yeah.
Chemo is different for every person,
every person even if it's the same type of cancer,
it's different, exact chemos.
I had four rounds but they're different
than most people's four round, a lot of people
that are getting chemo, a round is a week.
For me, it's months and my last two rounds
were called intensification one and two
and my second rounds, I didn't eat for weeks,
I couldn't eat, I couldn't sit up,
I couldn't lift my head, it's a feeling
that I could never describe, it's the worst,
worst feeling ever really.
As soon as I got out of the hospital, all I wanted to do
is go to my dance studio and train but I couldn't
because I still had no energy, I was still recovering
from the chemo and my doctors found a clot in my heart
which at first we were nervous about me doing
too much physical activity because if it moves,
it can go into my lung or a different part of the body
where, ya know, I wouldn't be able to breathe.
I had lost all my muscle, all of my muscle,
I couldn't jump, I couldn't, I would try to do things
and I would fall, it was really hard for me at first
but I would force myself to go to the dance studio
and even though I'd be panting and it was so hard,
I would still try to spend at least an hour at a time
at the dance studio and learning my dance,
finishing my dance and getting ready to compete.
Yeah so nobody really would say this but nobody thought
that I would be ready to compete but I've always been
really determined and when I really want something,
I'll be a pain in the a** until I get it so yeah,
six weeks later, I was able to compete and I won.
It was a good feeling, it was a good feeling.
I usually did pretty well at competition,
I didn't want this to be any different,
I didn't want people to say I had pity points,
I wanted, you know, to really earn my first place.
Once of the best moments of my whole entire life
was being on that stage that time.
It was like, I can't even describe it,
it was indescribable, yeah.
When people are fighting cancer, a lot of times,
people make shirts and bracelets and the saying on mine
on everything of mine was Aliyah strong.
So we even made a poster and kept it on stage with me
when I competed so yeah it's a special hashtag.
I'm trying to spend as much time as possible at the beach.
As soon as I go in the water, I never wanna get out
and the feeling of the sun on my skin is probably
my favorite feeling in the world.
I can't believe that today we got to do this finally
and come to the beach and basically do everything
that I wanted to do back a couple months ago.
I had no idea what life would be like a couple months
after treatment but I finally am able to feel
like my old self again, I feel so much better physically.
I mean it's not easy for me still, a lot of things
but I feel so much better and I, a couple months ago,
would never have expected to feel like that
so yeah there is a light at the end of the tunnel for sure.
- If you liked that video, please give us a thumbs up
and make sure to subscribe.
Now you know what I did when I hit a million subscribers,
I did a photoshoot in a leotard and tutu.
Do you have a crazy idea for two million?
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wanna miss this.
Ten minute photo challenge!
- Using an iPhone!
- Okay, let's get coffee.