“It’s a scary thing, and changes your entire life,” said Shelly Tilley regarding her 19-year-old daughter, Jessica Moreland, being diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. On the other hand, “the people I work with are the most wonderful people in the world,” she added about her co-workers at the Calvert County Health Department.
“I love them so much” for the sick time they have donated for me to use during
 |
| Moreland |
my daughter’s illness and for the barbecue fundraiser they hosted on Friday, June 27. “You don’t often get to work with people this wonderful,” she said, adding the community, including The Grill Sergeant that catered the barbecue, has also been overwhelmingly supportive.
According to Penny Goodenough, one of Tilley’s co-workers who helped organize the fundraiser, the evening raised more than $15,000. The funds will go a long way to reduce the more than $200,000 in health costs Moreland has accumulated since her diagnosis on April 28.
“I thought she had a pulled muscle,” Tilley, a registered nurse, said describing the leg pain that appeared as an early symptom of Moreland’s disease. “Boy was I wrong.” Later symptoms included a heart rate of 170. Moreland was also green in color and had difficulty breathing.
“Jessica is a trooper” Tilley said, about her somewhat shy daughter, who prefers not to speak publicly about her illness. She has been amazing through all of this, and “in the past, she did not display a sense of humor, but she has become a comedian” since her treatment started.
Moreland has the Philadelphia chromosome, a genetic mutation that comes with leukemia making it harder to treat. Nonetheless, her response to chemotherapy has amazed her doctors.
She is being treated with Gleevec, a drug doctors consider the magic bullet. “It has done something rig