Cancer might have met its match when it tried to rob MegAnn Schlader of her senior year.

Jenna Isaacson photo

MegAnn Schlader, right, signs a friend’s yearbook at her desk as classmates Jenny Keener, left, and Alex Wegener laugh before the start of a physics class yesterday at Hickman High School. Diagnosed in January with Stage 2 Hodgkin’s disease, MegAnn has undergone twice-monthly chemotherapy since then and sees the illness as an opportunity to help others.

Hodgkin’s disease, a type of lymphoma, kept MegAnn off the Hickman High School volleyball court this semester and claimed her long brown hair, but MegAnn fought back with a smile.

"I could sit around and mope for myself, but what’s that going to do for me?" she asked. "It wasn’t worth freaking out about."

That kind of attitude has made MegAnn a leader throughout her high school career, said Jenny Keener, a friend and former volleyball and basketball teammate.

"She’s very rarely negative," Jenny said. "If anyone could get through it, it’s her."

Jenny was with her when MegAnn noticed a lump on her neck in November. At first, doctors thought that her body was fighting an infection or that she had mononucleosis, and MegAnn joked about having a tumor. "I didn’t think it could be possible," she said.

After a month’s worth of blood work, CT scans and X-rays, doctors diagnosed Stage 2 cancer in January. By that time, MegAnn said she had come to terms with the possibility. "I started joking with my doctor. … I was not emotional. I never had a feeling I was going to cry."

But MegAnn did cry a month later when a beautician cut her hair, which had been somewhat of a trademark. She had hoped she would be spared the chemotherapy side effect, but seeing handfuls of strands in the shower and on her pillow proved too much.

"I didn’t want to wash my hair," she said. "I didn’t want to see it fall out. I wouldn’t turn on the light in the morning because I would see the hair on my pillow. My dad would come in later and brush it off before I could see it."

After a couple of weeks of donning a short style, MegAnn decided to shave her head. Instead of letting it get her down, the outgoing senior invited some friends to her house to take turns shaving her head.

"They came over and buzzed my head," she said. "It didn’t bother them, so why should it bother me?"

MegAnn rarely complains about her chemotherapy treatments, Jenny said.

Yesterday, just one day after receiving her twice-monthly chemo cocktail, MegAnn was back at school, waving to students who walked by and signing friends’ yearbooks. She should have been sick the day after the high dose of chemo, but MegAnn said she felt fine. The former volleyball team captain credits that to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

"Nurses have been amazed," she said. "I should be dead tired. I shouldn’t be back at school."

MegAnn still has three chemo treatments to go, although she’s been technically cancer-free for eight weeks. She said the disease has made her more spiritual.

"If God weren’t on my side, I don’t know what I would do," she said. "Whatever happens to you, God has a plan."

MegAnn will join fellow Hickman graduates on the stage at the Hearnes Center on June 3. At first, she felt a little disappointed she would don the cap with a bald scalp, but MegAnn said she’s "over it."

That positive attitude has made MegAnn an inspiration to her friends.

"She’s always been really inspirational to me," Jenny said. "She has such a good attitude about everything and is such a leader. I’ve strived to be like that."

MegAnn sees the disease as an opportunity to help others. "I have a purpose for having this," she said. "A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘You’re so inspirational.’ I want to help people. I didn’t ever want to look at it as ‘Why me?’ "

MegAnn plans this fall to head to Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, where she wants to major in biology and eventually enter the medical field. She’s not sure what the future holds but said she’s been told there’s a good chance some type of cancer will re-emerge.

MegAnn plans to exercise, maintain a healthy diet and stay strong in her faith so that she’ll be ready if it strikes again.

"I try not to think about it," she said. "I know what it takes to get through it. Anything you put your mind to, you can overcome."