Anita Robinson

It started as a simple cold, but when the cold was over the lump in her throat didn’t go away. Antibiotics did not knock it down and the lump remained. Finally, the lump grew angry and Anita’s doctor decided it was time to remove it and that’s when the diagnosis came back: Anaplastic large non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stage one. Two months of chemo came with hair loss, nausea, and missed school. For a 14-year-old high school freshman, who had never been sick, this was tough stuff.

The cancer never came back and after graduating from Syracuse University, Anita moved to Los Angeles and now works at a private middle school in North Hollywood. She loves seeing the sun nearly every day, plays sports with her friends, goes to the beach, and has a companion in her cat, Elio. And while she is cancer-free, she does not take her health or her life for granted. She is grateful for the care she received from her doctors at Upstate and the support from Paige’s Butterfly Run.