COTA for Sienna's Journey

Our Story

Sienna’s journey with leukemia began on Christmas morning, December 25, 2020.

What should have been a morning filled with presents, laughter, and family traditions instead brought us to the emergency room. Sienna was experiencing severe bone pain, and we knew something wasn’t right. At the time, we had no idea that Christmas morning would mark the beginning of a journey that would change her life and our entire family forever.

After weeks of appointments, testing, blood work, and searching for answers, on January 21, 2021, Sienna was officially diagnosed with B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL).

Further testing showed that Sienna’s leukemia carries a genetic abnormality known as iAMP21, which places her leukemia in a high-risk category and requires more intensive treatment and careful monitoring.

Suddenly, her teenage years became filled with chemotherapy, hospital stays, procedures, medications, blood counts, and an entirely new language none of us ever wanted to learn.

But Sienna refused to let cancer take everything from her.

During her first years of treatment, she found her way back to something she loved: show choir. Even while going through chemotherapy and dealing with hospital stays, she returned to performing during high school. Show choir gave her a piece of herself back. She could sing, perform, be with her friends, and simply be Sienna instead of always being “the girl with cancer.”

And despite everything treatment threw at her, Sienna graduated from high school.

That graduation meant so much more than receiving a diploma. It represented every hospital room she walked out of, every treatment she endured, every day she showed up when it would have been easier not to, and every piece of her teenage life she fought to hold onto.

When she finally finished treatment, Sienna was so excited to have her life back.

But she also never forgot what she had endured. Instead, it seemed to make her appreciate life even more. She celebrated everything, the big milestones and the little ones. She traveled with family, made memories, laughed, experienced new things, and enjoyed the freedom she had fought so hard to regain.

After everything cancer had demanded from her, Sienna made the decision to take a year off before college and simply enjoy being alive.

For once, there wasn’t another treatment or hospital stay defining what came next. She could just live.

Then, in 2026, our worst fear became reality.

Sienna’s leukemia returned.

Once again, the life she had worked so hard to rebuild was interrupted by cancer. This time, she is facing a battle that is even more complicated because her leukemia has relapsed and is considered high risk.

She has already endured intensive chemotherapy again and is now receiving blinatumomab (Blincyto) immunotherapy as her medical team works to get her leukemia into the deepest remission possible.

The goal now is to get Sienna to a bone marrow/stem cell transplant. Because of the high-risk features of her leukemia and the fact that it has returned, transplant represents her medical team’s best chance for a long-term cure.

The road to transplant and the recovery afterward will not be easy.

Sienna has already had to sit through conversations no young adult should ever have to hear. Doctors have explained the risks, possible complications, long hospital stays, feeding tubes, and the realities of what transplant and recovery can involve.

And somehow, through all of those conversations, she continues to look toward her future.

In fact, Sienna still plans to take a college class at Arizona State University this fall even while going through transplant.

That says so much about who she is.

Cancer may have changed the timeline of her life, but Sienna refuses to stop planning one.

She still wants to learn. She still wants to experience things. She still wants to travel, laugh, celebrate, go to college, and build the future she has imagined for herself.

Cancer has taken time from Sienna. It has taken pieces of her childhood and young adulthood. It has taken her hair, her independence at times, and countless days that should have been spent anywhere other than a hospital.

But it has never taken who Sienna is.

She is funny. She is loving. She is determined. She celebrates life fiercely because she understands its value in a way most people her age have never had to.

And she is incredibly strong.

As her family, our job is to stand beside her while she fights for that future.

The months ahead will include immunotherapy, transplant preparation, a lengthy hospitalization, and an extended recovery requiring close medical care and follow-up. During that time, our family needs to remain focused on Sienna while also navigating the financial impact that comes with an extended cancer and transplant journey.

That is why we have partnered with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA).

Funds raised for COTA in honor of Sienna will help with transplant-related expenses so that we can focus on what matters most: getting Sienna through treatment, through transplant, and back to the life she has already fought so hard to live.

Sienna’s fight began on Christmas morning in 2020.

She fought her way through treatment.

She went back to show choir.

She graduated high school.

She finished treatment.

She traveled.

She celebrated.

She took a year to simply enjoy life.

And now, even while preparing for a bone marrow transplant, she is planning for college.

Because Sienna isn’t planning her life around cancer.

She is planning for the life that comes after it.

And we are fighting right beside her with hope for remission, hope for transplant, and most of all, hope for a cure and a long future filled with many more things worth celebrating.

The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation’s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA’s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.