IOWA CITY, Iowa — Sixteen-year-old Haidyn Ulrich is many things. She’s an avid Iowa Hawkeyes fan, a performer, a top student, an aspiring nurse, and a survivor of pediatric cancer.
Haidyn had been healthy until she was 7, when she experienced neck pain and began sleeping for 22 hours at a time. Numerous tests finally led to a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia – a cancer of the blood and bone marrow – and she began treatment at University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
“She was rarely ever sick,” Haidyn’s mother, Brianne, remembers. “We never had to take her to the doctor.”
When she was 7, Haidyn told her parents after attending a bowling party that her neck hurt, so they thought she might have pulled a muscle. After a trip to the doctor’s office, she was given pain medication, but the pain continued.
Because she was running a fever, Brianne and her husband, Nicklaus, kept her home from school, and Haidyn began sleeping for 22 hours or more at a time, heightening their concerns.
She also was losing weight, and despite visits to their local doctor, they were not getting any answers that pinpointed the cause of her health issues. Brianne recalls reaching a point during an appointment where she sat on the floor and thought, “I’m not leaving until we find out what’s wrong with her.”
Read Haidyn’s story here.