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Childhood Cancer Survivor Pays It Forward at the Same Hospital She Received Treatment
Sailaja Darisipudi(she/her) has previously led communications for nonprofit organizations fighting against gendered violence and worked as an educator. She believes passionately in fighting for gender equality, destigmatizing mental health, making quality health resources available across socio-economic statuses and decreasing the gap between public education and the complexities of the American health care system. At Rutgers University, Sailaja studied public health, wrote and edited for newspapers such as RU Examiner and EMSOP Chronicles and accumulated an alarming number of parking tickets. When not working, Sailaja can be found getting lost (literally and metaphorically) in new cities, overanalyzing various romance books and streaming shows and ordering all the vegetarian items at different restaurants. You can also find her on Twitter at @SailajaDee.
Darlene Dobkowski, Managing Editor for CURE® magazine, has been with the team since October 2020 and has covered health care in other specialties before joining MJH Life Sciences. She graduated from Emerson College with a Master’s degree in print and multimedia journalism. In her free time, she enjoys buying stuff she doesn’t need from flea markets, taking her dog everywhere and scoffing at decaf.
A childhood cancer survivor now works raising funds for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the same hospital where she received treatment for Ewing sarcoma at 12 years old.
Since Megan Piotrowicz was treated for Ewing sarcoma in 2003, she knew she wanted to help others at a children’s hospital in some capacity by using her own personal experience with childhood cancer.
When Piotrowicz was 12, she had the typical concerns of any middle schooler including doing well in school and making the school’s basketball team. What she wasn’t expecting was a rare cancer diagnosis to upend these plans. Piotrowicz, who was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma in her skull (a rare place for the cancer to occur), immediately underwent three rounds of chemotherapy at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and started on a clinical trial. After three months, her tumor shrunk enough for her a neurosurgeon to be able to remove it and she was able to go back to school.
Throughout the entire experience, Piotrowicz took great comfort in the resources at CHOP. She decided she wanted to be just like the staff at the hospital who took care of her when she grew up. Nineteen years later, she is doing just that. Inspired by her parents’ philanthropic tendencies and her own roots at CHOP, she now works as a major gift officer for their neuroscience center, raising funds for the hospital to help take care of other children with cancer.
In today’s episode of the “Cancer Horizons” podcast, the now 31-year-old Philadelphia native explains what it was like to navigate a cancer diagnosis as a 12-year-old, how she found support from her family and faith, the joy she takes in giving back to CHOP as an adult, how the pediatric cancer space has evolved in the past 20 years, advice to other children with cancer and more.
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