Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By MACKENZEE SIMMS | Special to the Reporter

It was February 2020, and while most of Lana Turner’s classmates were doing homework, Lana was struggling with news that would change her life forever.

Lana had just started the second semester of her freshman year at Troy University, but was feeling under the weather. She visited the on-campus clinic and left armed with cough syrup and pain medicine to treat what was determined to be a stomach bug.

“I was so sick that I wasn’t even questioning it,” Lana said. “I went home and called my mom and she Facetimed me. I was glued to cold bathroom floor. I just did not want to get up. She noticed that under my eyes was super, super black. She’s like, ‘I’m going to come get you.’”

Lana’s mother, Danielle Turner, made the two-hour drive to pick her daughter up from college and then drove another two hours to bring her home, all so Lana’s college roommate wouldn’t catch the same bug.

But after a few days, Lana still wasn’t feeling any better. Unable to keep food down, she was too weak to even shower. That Friday, they decided to visit the local clinic.

The clinic tested Lana for everything from influenza to strep throat to mono, and her blood work revealed that the situation was far worse than originally feared.

“The blood work came back and (the doctor) thought their system was broke because my blood numbers were like something he had never seen before,” Lana said. “He ran them again and was like ‘Something is going on.’”

An ambulance transported Lana from the clinic to the nearest emergency room at Shelby Baptist Medical Center. After more rounds of testing, a medical resident first said the word that would change Lana’s life forever.

Cancer.

While Lana and her family wrestled with that word, there was a debate about where to send her. UAB Hospital or Children’s of Alabama? Just 13 days shy of her 19th birthday, Lana technically could qualify as a patient at either. After another hour of deliberation, it was decided and Lana was transported to Children’s.

It was almost midnight that evening when the doctors at Children’s officially diagnosed Lana with cancer, but it wasn’t until the next week that they could pinpoint the specific type: Acute myeloid leukemia.

For Lana, this diagnosis was devastating. One week, she was a college freshman, trying to get back into the swing of things following the holiday break. The next, she was a patient at Children’s of Alabama, starting her first round of in-patient chemo therapy.

“There was a lot of anger, a lot of sadness,” Lana said. “That’s when I was officially diagnosed with depression. I mean, as you can imagine, it’s not a walk in the park.”

The pandemic

Just weeks after Lana’s life had been turned upside down by her diagnosis, the whole world came to a screeching halt with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In the beginning, for the month that I could see people, it was hard, but at least I got to see people. I got to have some sense of normalcy,” Lana said. “Then COVID hit, and I was so isolated. I was very depressed. Literally, I never wanted to get out of bed when I was in the hospital.”

According to Lana, Children’s allowed two caregivers to visit patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, normally the child’s mother and father. But because Lana’s father had tragically been killed in a drunk driving accident the year prior, Lana’s sister, Lindsey, was allowed to visit as her second caregiver.

Her mother and her sister were the only people allowed to visit Lana while she was in the hospital, meaning she went weeks on end without seeing her brother, her sister in law or her dogs.

Lana missed her family, but she also missed her old life. She missed going to class, stressing about exams and spending time with her friends. And while the rest of the world figured out a new normal during COVID-19, Lana viewed it all through a hospital window.

“To be blunt, it was a very hard journey,” Lana said. “I know that sounds so simple, but I was in college. I was also having to deal with the grief that I lost my dad, but also the grief of missing out on this normal college experience that people are supposed to get. The whole outside world was kind of getting to go on with their lives, and I was stuck fighting cancer. It was very depressing and lonely.”

A golden idea

After her diagnosis in February of 2020, Lana spent a total of eight months in the hospital and underwent five rounds of inpatient chemo therapy and a month of targeted oral chemo.

Despite the pandemic, the patients were still allowed to leave their rooms, provided they wear a mask and follow safety precautions. During her stay in the hospital, Lana built several connections with other families and became friends with the other patients on the floor.

“(At first), I had no one to talk to, no one to connect with, but I kind of got over that hump,” Lana said. “It’s different having to be friends with smaller kids, because obviously, mentally we’re different and maturity-wise we’re different… but they’re fun to play with.”

Lana shared that she became very close with another patient, Ruddy, and that the pair are still friends to this day.

“I was a 19-year-old with a 2-year-old best friend,” Lana said. “But to me, it wasn’t about looking at his age. It was almost like I was playing like a little brother, a little sister or a little cousin.”

As Lana adapted to treatment and hospital life in the months following her diagnosis, the situation for the Turner family continued to strain. Lana’s mother, Danielle, couldn’t work her job as a real estate agent while caring for her daughter in the hospital.

“I couldn’t work, and of course this was all during COVID too and I’m a widow,” Danielle said. “We had no other income than what we had saved.”

In September 2020, in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, some of Danielle’s friends at work decided to sell golden bows—the color ribbon representing childhood cancer—as a way to raise money for the Turner family.

“My mom had to swallow her pride and accept help because she was a single mom with three kids who had done it for a year,” Lana said. “She could keep doing it, but no one can afford cancer. No matter how rich you are, the richest person in the world will never be able to afford cancer and everything that comes with it.”

The money raised by the bow sales helped the Turner family through the end of Lana’s inpatient chemo at Children’s, as well as the following year of oral chemo, which Lana finished in the fall of 2021.

When September rolled around in 2021, the Turner family remembered the blessing of the golden bow sales and what that meant for their family and decided to carry on the tradition to support other families.

“When we saw the amount of people supporting us through our journey financially, it was our turn to give back,” Lana said. “We saw what people did for us, and now we want to give to people who are in our same shoes or very similar shoes.”

Danielle learned how to make bows from her mother, Lana’s grandmother, and together the mother-daughter duo host annual bow sales. Every summer, Lana posts a video to remind people that bow sales are coming. Each bow costs $10 and Lana hand delivers any local sales or ship bows further abroad for an additional fee.

Lana and Danielle gather all of the money raised from the bow sales and purchase gift cards. Some are Visa gift cards while others are for gas, groceries or restaurants near the hospital. They deliver these gift cards to the social workers at Children’s to ensure that the gift cards go directly into the hands of families with children receiving treatment for childhood cancer.

“Even if it’s something as small as a $10 gift card, that’s $10 you don’t have to worry about for a Starbucks or food or gas,” Lana said. “It’s very rewarding for me to know that I’m taking a burden off of a family because, like I said, we know the feeling. Seeing firsthand how it affected my mom, it’s just rewarding to know I’m basically blessing someone who is similar to our family and our story.”

In addition to directly helping families like her own, Lana shared that the golden bow sales also serve to raise awareness for childhood cancer.

“When I was first diagnosed, they told me childhood cancer is rare, but it’s not that rare,” Lana said. “There are so many children being diagnosed every day and being taken from this world too soon because there aren’t enough options for them. Meanwhile, people don’t know about childhood cancer because it’s not in their face.”

In order to help raise awareness through the bow sales, Lana writes the story of a childhood cancer patient on the lengths of golden ribbon she fashions into bows.

According to Danielle, the stories on the bows have a profound impact on those who purchase them. People return year after year and request bows that share updates about the children featured on bows the year prior.

“To me, it’s not just a bow,” Danielle said. “When you put the name of a child on there and you get to read the story, it makes it a little bit more than just the yellow bow. It makes it real to these people.”

And while Lana shares the stories of other childhood cancer patients through her golden bows, she continues to share her story as well to raise awareness.

“If I can help one person know to get blood work done when they’re having headaches that are not going away and no one can find anything—if that is what helps diagnose them—then I know I’ve done my job at the end of the day,” Lana said. “Even if I reach one person, it could help them. Being able to share my story is very rewarding and it does make me feel like this was all worth it.”

The future

In October, Lana celebrated the third anniversary of the day she finished chemo.

Now, she has turned her attention to making a career out of helping others facing the same battle she did.

As Lana looks toward the future, she plans to continue to raise awareness for childhood cancer and to help those affected by it, both through her work and her bow sales.

Her journey with cancer started as a freshman at Troy University studying psychology. Now, she is a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, studying clinical medical social work, after graduating with her bachelor’s degree in April 2024.

Lana shared that a major factor in her current life trajectory was the social worker she worked with while she was a patient at Children’s of Alabama.

“I tell everyone this because it’s so true, but (my social worker) was my sunshine on my rainy days. She was our saving grace,” Lana said. “Her being there for us mentally and emotionally when we couldn’t have our family there with us, it was genuinely life changing.”

Lana now aims to provide that same level of support as she continues to give back by providing support for those fighting childhood cancer similar to all those who helped her win her fight.