A week before her senior year, this Texas teen thought the bruises covering her arms were from cheerleading. Then there were more.
A week before her senior year, this Texas teen thought the bruises covering her arms were from cheerleading.
Then there were more.
More than 30 bruises appeared while she was shopping for back-to-school clothes.
That shopping trip ended with an urgent care visit, a transfer to Texas Children’s Hospital and news no teenager preparing for her senior year expects to hear:
17-year-old Madi Alaniz has leukemia.
Her aunt Jordan reached out to me asking for one thing above everything else: prayer.
Because Madi was supposed to be walking into her senior year at Victoria West High School in Victoria, Texas.
She’s a lieutenant on the varsity cheerleading squad. She should be thinking about Friday night lights, cheering on the sidelines, prom, graduation and all those “lasts” that make senior year something you remember forever.
Instead, she has been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, or ALL, and is beginning what her family says will be an especially intensive first nine months of treatment, followed by additional treatment that could last about two years.
When I asked Jordan what scares Madi most, it wasn’t difficult for him to answer.
Missing her senior year.
Madi had special senior pants made to wear while cheering on the sidelines this year. Since she may not get to wear them the way she imagined, her family used them as inspiration for “Madi’s Warriors” shirts.
Their message is beautiful:
If Madi can’t be on the sidelines cheering for everyone else right now, they want an entire community on the sidelines cheering for her.
So that’s what I’m asking all of you to do.
Cover this young woman in prayer as she begins a fight she never imagined she’d be facing at 17.
Pray that treatment works. Pray for strength when she’s exhausted and peace when she’s scared. Pray for her parents, Anthony and Krissy, and for the doctors caring for their daughter.
And pray that the senior year Madi remembers most isn’t defined by what leukemia took away, but by how many people showed up to remind her that she never fought it alone.
