Cancer diagnosis, Centre support lead student to career opportunities

Taylor Webb was settling into her first year as a student and softball player at Centre when she noticed something wasn’t right. At first, she thought maybe it was stress, but the difficulty breathing and chest pain wouldn’t go away.

She went to the hospital with her roommate to have her symptoms checked out. When the test results came back, doctors told her to call her parents. There was a tumor in her chest. The diagnosis: Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer that affects the body’s lymphatic system, part of the immune system.

“Nobody prepares you for that, especially at 18 years old,” Webb said. “That was the beginning of the journey.”

Webb went home to Tennessee to begin treatment — away from her friends, teammates and the life at Centre she had begun building.

Thanks to close friendships, support from the Centre community and a resolute determination, Webb is now cancer-free and making the most of what she learned from her journey, every step of the way.

“I have a really amazing support system, and I don’t want to discount it,” Webb said. “My friends, my sorority, and my teammates, they all really showed love. Especially toward the beginning, where it is really hard and where you feel like you’re on an island.”

The beginning of her Centre journey

Webb was recruited to play softball at Centre. An infielder and pitcher, she appeared in six games as a first-year student in spring 2023. She also threw herself into campus life, joining the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

 But everything was put on hold as she began chemotherapy back home in Brentwood, Tennessee.

“I was doing treatment in Nashville, and my friends (at Centre) were continuing their lives here. So I was left sitting at home watching my friends on social media and thinking, ’That is the life I’m supposed to have,’” she said.

“I was just left trying to deal with it. Like, how does all this impact my life? Who am I now that I have had this happen to me?”

In addition to the emotional impact of being torn away from her life on campus, Webb was overloaded with cancer resources — an overwhelming amount of medical jargon that led to unconstructive web searches. Those resources, however, didn’t accurately speak to her personal struggle with the mental and social side of what it meant to have cancer as a young adult.

“I definitely spent a lot of my treatment in a depression,” she said. “It sucked. My life sucked. Which is a very natural feeling when you’re going through something like that.”

In the fall of 2023, Webb traveled to Danville Tuesday through Thursday for classes and returned to Tennessee Friday through Monday for treatment. Support was found in both places.

“I had really amazing nurses,” Webb said. “They were the closest thing I had to a support staff” — something she would’ve received if she was slightly younger and treated as a pediatric patient.

“Now I want to be in that space, where I try to educate or work on getting nurses the programming to help patients through things when you can’t have someone like a social worker or therapist in the building,” she said.

The good with the bad

In early 2024, Webb had another brief scare and surgery to remove her tonsils to ensure that the cancer had not spread. It hadn’t, and she received word that her cancer was officially in remission.

That spring, Webb began to look back on her tumultuous 2023 and the emotional toll of her experiences. She began to think of ways she might have a positive impact on others like her who might feel lost in a cancer diagnosis as an adolescent or young adult (AYA).

“If I can impact one other person’s life who went through what I went through and maybe not make it as hard, then it’s worth it to me,” Webb said. “I get emotional thinking about it. It gives me a sense of purpose.”

Webb and sorority sister Jane Daniel began work on an easy-to-read cancer compendium — designed for AYA patients who might need more help with the mental trauma of cancer treatment. Associate Professor of Psychology Drew Morris helped to guide the pair along the way, providing mentorship through the research project.

“I did a lot of reflecting on everything that I experienced mentally and was like, ’I don’t want anyone else to feel that way or feel like they don’t have the tools to overcome this or think that they can’t,’” Webb said. “I wanted to create something that could impact more people who had gone through what I went through.”

Webb and Daniel reached more than 350 healthcare professionals — oncologists, pharmacists, social workers, school interventionalists and more — to create the guide. The team also sought out expertise within Centre, working with Assistant Professor of Biology Christina Garcia and her research student, rising junior Ryan Clements, to better understand the biological side of cancer.

“Young adults, people in rural communities, they might not have the time or resources to dive into cancer research,” Morris said. “When we tell people what these students are doing, we get a snowball effect — you tell one expert, and they say, ’You have to talk to this person as well.’ It has been exceptional, the amount of excitement and accessibility that has come from this.”

How it’s going

Today, Webb is in remission. Her hair is back to its natural color and thickness. She’s back on campus with her friends. But the tumultuous experiences during her first year at Centre changed her life.

During the fall semester, she spent time at the University of Kentucky in a psycho-oncology lab, thanks to the research project — one doctor was impressed with Daniel and Webb, and offered them a job there. Webb was also selected to attend the Cancer Research Career Explorations program at the University of Florida, an event that took place in early February.

“Centre really prepared me. Even while working at UK, people there were impressed with the research skills I gained at Centre,” Webb said.

The opportunities have allowed Webb to look forward to a future full of promise and a career calling close to her heart.

“It’s crazy for me to look back on this time last year and how different I look, feel, everything,” she said. “It’ll always be different — the trajectory of my life has changed. I want to pursue a Ph.D. in psycho-oncology and work with cancer patients, work with mental healthcare research. I would never have wanted to do that had I not been diagnosed and done this project.

“I just feel very lucky.”