Nicole was an active 14-year-old high school student who loved cheerleading, competing in beauty pageants and hanging out with her friends. Her life quickly changed when she found her fatigue and flu-like symptoms were effects of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), an aggressive disease that rendered Schulz’s bone marrow 97 percent cancerous. Nicole was immediately taken to City of Hope to spend the next three and a half months enduring a daily regimen of chemotherapy and blood and platelet transfusions to fight the cancer. While this put her remission, she was not cured.

But there was hope. Nicole was a candidate for a bone marrow transplant, in which her own malfunctioning marrow cells would be replaced with healthy marrow from a matching unrelated donor. After two bone marrowtransplants, and much perseverance, Nicole is now back to living the life she once knew. When she visits the children in the same pediatric ward she once resided in, she tells the young patients to never give up and shares her own experience as encouragement. Nicole is truly a ‘face of hope.’

Watch this video on YouTube >>

More Faces of Hope >>