The Bell Project: Surviving Childhood Cancer

Fifteen-year-old Julia had just moved from Brazil to Orlando; beginning her freshman year, she thought the constant fatigue and tiredness was part of being a teenager—but when a lump appeared on her neck, she knew something was wrong.

A week after undergoing a surgical biopsy on her neck, Julia was excited to get back to her normal life; but in her third period biology class, she was called to the front office—her dad was there to take her home. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but he told her they had to go back to the hospital to get her scar checked out; that was when Julia found out what was really going on.

“[When I was diagnosed] ...it was like a hole opened in the ground and I just fell into it. I wanted to run from that place and never come back. This isn’t happening, it’s just a bad dream. I didn’t feel like me.” Julia was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in December of her freshman year. The thought of cancer felt so distant to her; she’d never had any friends or family who had had cancer, so she didn’t know what to expect. To her, cancer meant she was going to die.

After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, she fortunately achieved remission by the following March: “Getting to remission was the greatest moment I’ve ever had. I had never felt more free from something that was keeping me down all the time. I felt such compassion for the people who helped me through everything. I feel like they’re the most important part; everything I’ve gone through, the people that helped me, they changed me in such a great way.”

Inspired by the kindness that she received during her treatment, Julia created “The Bell Project,” a club at her high school that donates toys, makeup, and even wigs—the one thing Julia said she wanted during her treatment but couldn’t get—to AdventHealth for Children. “[The Bell Project] helped me so much because I got to see cancer from a different point of view. I was seen as the patient, as somebody that had gone through it and felt all the pain, but now I get to be somebody who's helping, who knows the disease from the other side too. I'm so grateful to be here alive and getting to do this.” Julia hopes to one day turn The Bell Project into a full foundation and continue to donate to AdventHealth for Children.