StemCell Therapy

Sitting against the fence on the Stuart Field turf, Mike Tucker for reasons obvious and not liked what he saw as he watched his University of Dayton womens soccer team practice for Fridays Atlantic 10 Conference opener at Massachusetts.

Im sitting here now just kind of enjoying the stuff were doing, Tucker said as the ball went to Flyers star Colleen Williams, who, without hesitation, passed to a teammate in better position for a shot.

When your star players have the attitude that theyre just as happy to get an assist as a goal, it carries over to everybody else.

That team attitude was never more evident than just before practice when Tucker and his players made the biggest assist theyll make all season.

With a university film crew on hand, the entire team chorused a get-well wish and senior players also offered individual messages to one of the their biggest fans and someone who has become especially dear to Tucker.

Krystal Byrne, a 27-year-old recent UD grad, is someone who for years has shown she dearly loves the school and, because of it, has ended up getting that love in return.

A top student, a star athlete, someone with an effervescent personality, she came to UD from Ottoville, her small hometown in northwest Ohio, in August 2004. After a semester, she had a 3.8 grade-point average, had joined the dance team and hoped to walk onto Tuckers soccer team.

But during the spring she was diagnosed with biphenotypic acute leukemia (BAL) and that began a staggering eight-year odyssey that included heart failure, a kidney transplant, a stem cell transplant, chemotherapy, full-body radiation, other surgeries, and even last rites. She was forced to drop out of school five times and, she estimates, another 15 times her medical condition forced her to leave UD for home although she was able to do her work from afar and stay enrolled.

And yet she never gave up and each time she returned to her beloved school, she reached for more. She became a regular on the Deans List and joined the Red Scare, sometimes showing up at basketball games with her face painted red and blue.

Because of her embrace of soccer she had played on the boys varsity at Ottoville and her upbeat attitude, Tucker took a liking to her. He had her address his team and gave her an open invitation to sit on the bench during games.

See the rest here:
A get-well wish from UD soccer

This entry was posted on October 1, 2012 at 11:20 am and is filed under Stem Cell kidney Failure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |