Humans Of West Delaware: Maggie Saunders

“I had a disease that was called Severe Aplastic Anemia. It was a disease that shut down my Immune System and basically disintegrated all of my blood cells. I had two to three months to live without a bone marrow transplant because you can’t live without an immune system. They labeled it as a rare type of  leukemia and treated me like it was leukemia, but it actually wasn’t cancer. It was a very rare blood disease.”

“I want to go to school for pediatrics or pediatric oncology, basically for what I was in the hospital for, but I don’t know. I just feel like it will be a hard time for me for when I do get into medical school and start learning about that because it would make me very emotional, so I don’t know if I want to do that. I don’t want to see kids go through what I had to go through.”

“I think that if I didn’t have (Severe Aplastic Anemia), I wouldn’t have to worry about…I can’t give blood now, and I can’t do certain things, and I have to go to the Children’s Hospital every single year for the rest of my life, and I could relapse at any moment, like right now, or in ten years, or whatever, but there’s always going to be a part of me that feels like I will just go downhill again.”

“My sister is in the military, and she is the one that donated the bone marrow to me, so I looked up to her as my hero, so she basically did save my life. She was my idol the whole time.”

“Our motto, especially at the Children’s Hospital and on campus, was ‘don’t stop believing,’ like you’ll make it through. Don’t doubt anything. I’ve always said that to myself through all of my hard times in life. I also want to say thanks you to West Delaware and especially my class and teachers for supporting me the whole time before, during, and after my diagnosis. I really appreciate everyone.”