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Edgemont Resident Graduates With A Degree In 'Life Lessons'

SCARSDALE, N.Y. -- For Edgemont resident Ayesha Khan, college graduation on May 19 couldn't be sweeter.

Edgemont resident Ayesha Khan at ProCure.

Edgemont resident Ayesha Khan at ProCure.

Photo Credit: Contributed

That's because the 22-year-old wasn't sure she'd make it to this day. Despite her youth and lack of family history, Khan was diagnosed with breast cancer last January, four months before she was supposed to graduate.

She said she felt a lump randomly one day while changing. "It was as if it just appeared," she said. "I had never noticed it before. Cancer didn't even seem like a possibility at the time, but just to be safe I went to a few doctors that ran a bunch of tests. No one thought it would be anything super serious... because why would a 21-year-old have breast cancer?"

Her diagnosis, however, put her in another realm, that of "cancer patient" at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx and ProCure Proton Therapy Center in New Jersey as opposed to student. It also meant taking a medical leave from Pace University's Manhattan campus, having surgery and undergoing weeks of chemotherapy and then proton therapy. (Her doctors recommended proton therapy because it's a more targeted form of radiation that uses protons to precisely target the tumor site and avoid damaging healthy surrounding tissue.)

"Early on, I realized that out of all of the terrible situations in the world, mine wasn't the worst," said Khan. "Meeting other patients and their families and hearing their stories really opened my eyes to the various levels of adversity people are faced with.

"Everyone is battling something. So although I lost all of my hair, had to postpone graduation and derail my anticipated path and have a mastectomy at 21, I realized that I was still lucky. My cancer was treatable and detected early, and treatment allowed me to make a full recovery. Plus, the doctors and staff at ProCure were incredible to me and made the process a lot easier."

Her advice for other young survivors: "A positive attitude really transforms a situation from impossible or unattainable. There is always good that outweighs the bad."

And while she said she'll never be the same person she was pre-diagnosis, she's happy to be a newer, wiser version of herself.

She returned to school in January 2015 and is just about finished with her last semester.

"I couldn't be happier to be back to my 'normal' routine," she said. "My experience with cancer has given me the gift to navigate through the 'stresses' of school and ordinary routine with new perspective."

 

 

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