Gracen’s story: A summer project and “Finishing the Fight” against cancer

By all appearances, Gracen was doing exactly what a driven 29-year-old Dallas attorney does best: working relentlessly, preparing for trial and pushing through discomfort without complaint.

There was no reason to believe anything was wrong.

She felt healthy, was in the middle of building a demanding civil trial practice and planning a wedding. Gracen was living the kind of life where annual checkups feel optional and a lingering cough feels inconvenient at worst.

What Gracen didn’t know then was that the cough she dismissed as just allergies or maybe pneumonia would lead to a diagnosis of ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive blood cancer, and that the months ahead would be coined her “summer project.”

Esta es su historia.

A small symptom and a doctor who paid attention

Gracen’s cough started quietly in enero 2025.

“It was dry. Annoying,” Gracen said. “It wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse either—or so I thought.”

At the time, she was preparing for a major jury trial, working 250-hour months and doing what she loved: advocating for people who had been wronged.

But Gracen had one thing many people in their 20s don’t: a long-standing relationship with her primary care physician.

“A lot of 20-somethings don't think about regular checkups. They're not normalized,” Gracen said.

She had been seeing Elecia Kim, MD, an internal medicine physician on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center, part of Baylor Scott & White Health, for years. She had her annual check-up on enero 2, so her baseline was set. As she quickly came to find out, that consistency mattered.

Gracen needed to be at her best to argue in front of a jury during the upcoming trial, and this cough just wouldn’t go away. It had been around for six weeks at this point. When Gracen finally called Dr. Kim in March, hoping for a quick prescription and a fast fix during a virtual appointment, Dr. Kim asked one question that changed everything: “How long has the cough been going on?”

Upon learning of the duration, Dr. Kim decided that the timeframe definitely crossed the line and raised some flags. She told Gracen that a chest X-ray is the next step to determine the cause.

Gracen agreed to a chest X-ray the next day, still assuming it was allergies or maybe walking pneumonia. Dr. Kim called and said the X-ray warranted additional tests, so she sent Gracen for a rush CT scan and blood work. Hours later, Dr. Kim called Gracen with the results.

“I still thought I maybe had pneumonia at worst, so I was walking into a networking happy hour when Dr. Kim called and told me to go to the ER,” Gracen said. “She said there was an abnormality on the CT scan and my bloodwork showed I was sick. It might be nothing. It might be something. But I needed a biopsy and more tests, quickly.”

Nine days that saved a life

What happened next unfolded with stunning speed.

From the day of her chest X-ray to a confirmed cancer diagnosis took just nine days.

“It’s an almost unheard-of timeline for something this rare that I could have easily dismissed as a cold for much longer,” Gracen said.

Behind the scenes, Dr. Kim had already assembled what Gracen now calls her multidisciplinary “strike team,” which included, Edward Pearson, md, hematologist-oncologist on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center, part of Baylor Scott & White Health and Jengibre Tsai-Nguyen, MD, pulmonologist on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center, part of Baylor Scott & White Health, as well as numerous radiology and biopsy specialists.

“They knew why I was there before I even walked into the ER, and they had a plan,” Gracen said.

The CT scan revealed a nine-centimeter mass in the mediastinal space between Gracen’s lungs. Further testing ruled out other causes until only one diagnosis remained:

It was cancer.

More specifically, Gracen was diagnosed with ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that accounts for only a tiny fraction of blood cancer cases.

Her doctors noted that this form of cancer can be particularly aggressive without swift and intensive treatment. Initially, her prognosis was sobering, only about a 30% chance of five-year survival.

What she didn’t realize at the time was how serious her condition already was, or how different the outcome could have been if she had not reached out to Dr. Kim and gone in for that chest X-ray.

“So many what ifs,” Gracen said. “If Dr. Kim had dismissed me, if I hadn’t called, if she hadn’t followed the standard of care, this all could have gone very differently,” she said. “That decision saved my life.”

“I’m the quarterback now”

When Gracen met Dr. Pearson for the first time, he didn’t mince words. “He told me, ‘I’m the quarterback now and we’re going to beat this.’”

For Gracen, that certainty mattered.

“The hardest part of any medical crisis is the uncertainty,” she said. “And at no point during this whole ordeal did I feel like Baylor Scott & White wasn’t on top of this. That allowed me to relinquish control when I was at my sickest point.”

“I never felt like I wasn't being taken care of by the doctors at Baylor Scott & White,” Gracen said. “It was a seamless transition and handoff from Dr. Kim to Dr. Pearson.”

Even when additional testing revealed that her lymphoma was ALK-negative, a subtype with a significantly higher risk of recurrence, her care team stayed ahead of every turn.

“When my prognosis changed during the middle of chemotherapy treatment and the chance of recurrence dramatically increased, I told Dr. Pearson I wasn’t interested in living scan-to-scan for the rest of my life,” she said. “I wanted to kick cancer in the teeth now.”

Dr. Pearson’s answer was a bone marrow transplant. This was going to be a trial like she’d never experienced before. It would test her physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Planning a wedding and “My Summer Project”

Gracen received her official diagnosis in April and it was determined that chemotherapy would stretch through the summer to prepare her for the transplant.

In the midst of all this, Gracen was planning a wedding. She and her partner, Brian, had been together nearly eight years and were scheduled to marry in June, until cancer changed the timeline.

“You have your whole life ahead of you, and then it turns out upside down,” Gracen said. “It was the most surreal time. One day I’m preparing for my wedding, the next I’m planning chemotherapy.”

“When Dr. Pearson told me I couldn’t have a wedding in June, I asked if it was a suggestion or an instruction,” she said. “It was an instruction.”

Instead, they opted for a courthouse ceremony in May, one that turned into something far bigger than expected. Friends, referred to by Gracen as her Fairy Godmothers, quietly coordinated florals, photography, a violinist (a local attorney with a hidden musical talent), hair and makeup, and even had her wedding dress altered in a week. When Gracen walked into the courtroom, 80 people were there waiting.

“Basically everyone that was going to our wedding, and then some, showed up to a courthouse on a random Thursday afternoon,” Gracen said. “It was a very powerful moment.”

“One week later, I started chemo,” she said. “Not the wedding or honeymoon either of us envisioned, but it was still perfect.”

After the wedding, Gracen began reframing everything in her world.

“I started calling cancer ‘My Summer Project’ after a college professor shared a journal entry coining the phrase from her own cancer fight,” she said. “Summer projects are tedious, temporary and meant to make you better. You do them once and move on.”

The name stuck.

“It made cancer easier to talk about,” she said. “People could ask, ‘How’s your summer project going?’ instead of ‘How’s your cancer?’ And it made the ending feel real.”

The term also helped with the physical realities of treatment. Chemotherapy side effects made even hearing the words “cancer” or “chemo” nauseating.

“So I gave it a code name,” Gracen said. “I was just working on My Summer Project at the Clubhouse, which is what I called the hospital. It’s a very exclusive club, though the price of admission (having cancer) is high.”

Chemotherapy, a transplant and extra innings

Gracen rang the bell in August, finishing six rounds of BV-CHP chemotherapy, but her Summer Project was not over. In October, Gracen underwent an intensive chemotherapy regimen of 10 rounds in six days at the Baylor Scott & White Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center, to condition her body for the bone marrow transplant, followed by an autologous stem cell transplant, under the care of Jana Reynolds, MD, a medical oncologist with Texas Oncology on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center, part of Baylor Scott & White Health.

Her transplant day, octubre 13, became her “new birthday.”

“I did most of my conditioning chemo outpatient to try to maintain normalcy until my transplant admission,” Gracen said. “Dr. Reynolds never said no unless it put my health at risk.”

She spent weeks hospitalized, was discharged just before Halloween and received the best gift imaginable on Christmas Day, a confirmation she was in remission after the transplant.

“The summer project went into extra innings,” Gracen said. “But it still counted.”

Fertility, fears and being seen as “One of One”

Midway through treatment, another reality surfaced for Gracen, her fertility.

High-dose chemotherapy and transplant carry up to a 90% chance of permanent infertility. After learning she needed a transplant, Gracen underwent emergency fertility-preservation efforts in a matter of days, including receiving four times the amount of daily fertility injections than normal to attempt an egg retrieval before the next round of chemotherapy. These efforts, unfortunately, weren’t successful.

“The chemo had already impacted my body so much that the only way to have a chance was time off from chemo, and we simply didn't have that.”

Still, what stayed with her was how her team responded.

“Dr. Pearson called me, not because I asked, but because he wanted me to know my fertility mattered to him,” she said. “He said, ‘I have children, and your fertility is important to me. And even though I can’t fix this right now, I am focused on beating your cancer and saving your life.’”

There were ongoing conversations amongst Gracen’s care team about her fertility and ways to try to save it in the future, and they are still optimistic about her fertility, even now.

Throughout her care, one phrase became a constant.

 “You are one of one,” Dr. Pearson said. “Your genetics, your cancer, your prognosis—there’s no algorithm for that.”

For Gracen, it changed everything about her once-scary prognosis. “I was un-Googleable,” she said. “And instead of fear, that gave me peace.”

Finding light through art and healing and Finishing the Fight

As Gracen adjusted to life with cancer and the rigor of treatment, she searched for ways to cope and found the Artes en Medicina program at Baylor Scott & White Health.

“It was a window in a very dark room,” she said.

Art classes and creative spaces gave her something to look forward to.

“That level of programming gave me hope. It reminded me I was still me.”

Since its establishment in 2015, Baylor Scott & White Health’s Artes en Medicina program has offered services ranging from art therapy and music therapy to live performances and open studio time for patients of all ages and conditions. At its core, the program addresses the whole person, not just the condition.

Gracen’s journey eventually led to a moment that resonated far beyond the hospital walls. Her artwork was featured during the NHL’s Hockey Fights Cancer Night with the Dallas Stars.

The message Gracen chose, “Finish the Fight,” became a rallying cry, emblazoned on hundreds of shirts distributed to fans, players and coaches alike.

A longtime Dallas Stars fan and season ticket holder made this extra special. “Walking into that arena and seeing people wearing Finish the Fight shirts was surreal,” Gracen said. “It felt like a community of support cheering me on every step of this journey.”

“It showed me how healing can ripple outward,” she said. “How art, medicine and community truly do come together.”

Life after the summer project

Today, Gracen is cancer-free and transitioning into long-term survivorship care. Her life looks different now. It’s slower, more intentional and grounded in gratitude that she never expected to have.

“When the worst possible thing happens to you, you find out who you are,” Gracen said. “If you would have told me a year ago that I would receive a cancer diagnosis and handle it with the level of grit and bravery that I did, I would not have believed you. I'm a fundamentally different and changed person, with a different set of values and confidence in myself, in medicine and in my family. I'm a lot stronger than I ever thought I was.”

Gracen and Brian have rescheduled their wedding for mayo 2026.

“When I found out I was in remission, it was the coolest thing to rebook that wedding date. We are going to have our big wedding and it’s going to be an ‘I Beat Cancer’ party at the same time,” Gracen said. “And I’m wearing my wedding dress again out of spite!”

After all Gracen has gone through, her message is simple.

“I hope that someone in their 20s or 30s hears my story and goes to the doctor and that they don’t ignore the small things. Helping someone else would make this all worth it, as cancer is otherwise a frustrating battle to endure.”

Because sometimes, a lingering cough isn’t just a cough. Sometimes, it’s the beginning of a summer project that saves your life.

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