Program Graduate Profile: Kenya Davis
When twenty-seven year old Kenya Davis was diagnosed with leukemia in March 2008, she was shocked. “I had just had a checkup earlier that year, in November, and the doctor said, other than being a little anemic, I was perfectly healthy,” she recalls.
Pregnant with her second child, Kenya suffered a miscarriage a few months later. “I always say that baby saved my life,” she says, “because this is how they discovered that I was sick. I truly know the meaning of ‘blessing in disguise.’”
Kenya was ready to fight her cancer from the initial diagnosis. The mother of a five-year-old daughter, Déziah, she says she didn’t have time to feel bad about it. In fact, she says that she thinks her husband, Lynwood, took it a lot harder than she. “I had to be in the hospital for my first treatment for a full month,” she remembers. “And, I think he stayed in the hospital with me for 29 of the 30 days.” Now in chemotherapy, she says the hardest thing is being away from her family during each weeklong in-hospital treatment.
Kenya was referred to the Look Good…Feel Better program by her social worker at the hospital and figured that it might be a fun distraction from everything else going on around her. “It was so much more than I thought it would be. I thought I would go to see a presentation about skin care and it would be educational, but I had no idea it would be so much fun!” laughs Kenya.
The title of this program speaks for itself, she says, because that’s just how she says she felt. “I looked good and felt so much better during and after the session. In fact, I felt like a superstar! All of the little tricks to pamper myself and forget about treatments for a little while goes a long way.”
“Best of all, I walked away with a lot of new friends. People who knew exactly what I was going through.”
Kenya finishes her chemotherapy treatments in October of 2008 and she cannot wait. “I’m done. I’ve been at peace with my leukemia since I was diagnosed and I always knew that I would come out the other end okay and that helped me out a lot. But I am done with it. I want to go back to work.”
To arrange interviews with Look Good…Feel Better program graduates please contact Courtney Jones, Look Good…Feel Better program coordinator at (202) 454-0313 or jonesc@personalcarecouncil.org.
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