BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Mikayla Weaver is a 17-year-old senior at Walker High School in Livingston Parish. She loves fixing cars and was accepted to her dream college in Tennessee.
But right now, she’s fighting for her life.
About a month ago, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Large B-Cell Lymphoma in her lung, collar bone, lumber spine, abdomen and her leg. Lymphoma is a type of blood cell that causes abnormal B cells to develop.
Weaver said she was quarantining because she had COVID-19. The day before she was supposed to go back to school, she said it hurt to breathe. She went to the hospital, where doctors did a scan and found the cancer spots on the left side of her chest.
“Through the whole thing I was telling myself ‘Okay, whatever it is, I know they can deal with it,’ but I had my moments where I broke down,” she said.
Weaver said that she’s been telling herself not to let cancer get to her. A therapist told her to redirect her thoughts.
“If you start to let it get to you just think about something else. Think of something that makes you happy,” she said.
Samantha Beasley, Weaver’s mom, said the diagnosis was blindsiding because Weaver had been perfectly healthy.
“We’re in the right place, we have the right people to take care of her and her doctors are very optimistic about it,” Beasley said.
Weaver says that she got the official Stage 3 Large B-Cell Lymphoma diagnosis on Feb. 9.
“And that afternoon is when we were told it was Stage 3 and that she had spots in her lung. It’s in her lymph nodes … so they’re everywhere,” Beasley said.
Beasley said that the spots that are enlarged and considered a tumor are near her collarbone, in her abdomen, near her lumbar spine and in her upper right leg.
“The location and the spreading out made it Stage 3,” Beasley said.
Weaver went through her first treatment Tuesday but as time goes on, Beasley said she could be in the hospital for five to seven days. Weaver’s next appointment will determine whether or not her chemo treatments will increase.
Weaver, a senior at Walker High, is set to graduate in May and attend Lincoln Tech in Tennesee for Collision Repair and Refinishing Technology later this year. She said a mechanics class at school led her to a love for fixing cars. It’s also where she met her friend, David Navarro, and his mother, Tiffany.
Tiffany Navarro, the organizer of Weaver’s GoFundMe, said she started the campaign because she knew things would be hard financially.
“And especially when it comes to having to travel back and forth to Tennessee for St. Jude’s. They’ll cover the cost there, but they don’t cover the costs back and forth,” she said. “With Samantha having to take off from work, and just not being able to be there all the time. I know the financial strain on it, it just could be really, really hard.”
Navarro said that she has been going to local car dealerships to see if Weaver and her family can get a reliable car.
“But my end goal is to make sure that they are great, financially supported, and that she (Samantha) doesn’t have to worry about going to work and missing work and that they have the money that they need for medical expenses and personal things and that they have a vehicle that they can trust to get to and from their medical appointments and not be stuck on the side of the road and have to worry that they’re going to get stuck,” Navarro said.
The GoFundMe was created to help cover the cost of her medical bills, and Navarro said that Weaver has used the money she had been saving to fix her car to cover some of the costs already.
Weaver said that she talked to her doctors and her social worker to make sure that she could go to prom and walk across the stage for graduation.
“She’s come so far and worked so hard,” Beasley said. “This cancer is not taking that from her.”
Weaver’s family has also set up a T-shirt fundraiser to help cover the cost of bills and other expenses. The GoFundMe can be found here.
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