PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Gratitude. Joy. Blessed. Those are not words you expect to hear from a family with childhood cancer.
“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, we’re lucky,’” said Trish Adkins, whose daughter Lily had cancer as a child.
But that’s the Adkins family mantra. They feel fortunate that their daughter is not only alive, but also thriving and inspiring.
When Lily was just 13 months old, her parents thought she had the stomach flu. But after several trips to the pediatrician, life changed.
“She used the word ‘glioma’ which we had never heard of before. And she said that a lot of childhood gliomas are actually treatable. And I was like… I don’t know what that means,” said Lily’s mother Trish Adkins.
Things got worse at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where Lily was diagnosed with a brain tumor called ependymoma.
“Her journey started that day and that night at CHOP,” Trish Adkins said.
Surgery was performed, the tumor was removed and a shunt was placed to drain fluid. That shunt would fail twice. And there’s a possibility it could happen again.
But cancer certainly doesn’t define Lily.
She rows for the South Jersey Rowing Club and just received a scholarship to row for Division II Dominican University in New York.
“Rowing is honestly like there’s not a care in the world,” Lily said. “You don’t have to worry about what’s happening on land, you’re just on the water. And if you don’t concentrate, you’ll fall in. And so you have to concentrate on that and that alone.”
Lily becomes a para-rower and wants to show other young people with disabilities that they too can be athletes.
“From Lily not being able to walk, to seeing her now doing the sport she loves… and not just rowing, but embracing her disability and her difference and using that to lead – I think she’s has adjusted her entire life and shows how as if that adjustment doesn’t make her weak, it makes her strong,” said Trish Adkins.
She will study special education.
“I really want to help kids learn the way they learn,” Lily said, “and not the way a teacher or principal said they should.”
The whole family also wants to educate people about Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.
Adkins family
Trish Adkins met Liz Scott, co-executive director of Alex’s Lemonade Stand, at CHOP when Lily was first diagnosed.
“She came back with armfuls of Alex’s stuff and swag,” said Lily’s father Mike Adkins. “From then on, we were there, you know, and part of that family. And not long after that we had a lemonade stand.”
In 2015, the Adkins even broke the world record for the largest cup of lemonade.
Adkins family
Despite everything they’ve been through, it all comes back to their motto: they are one happy family.
“We were really lucky. And I think that’s the difference between before and after,” Trish Adkins said. “I don’t think before I realized how much good there was in the world.”
“I look at it as wanting to help others because others are helping me,” Lily said.
