Peyton Gully was a 15-year-old cross country runner when she was diagnosed with cancer. Now, at 23 years old, she is returning to where she spent so much time in treatment, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta — not as a patient, but as a nurse.
Gully grew up in Marietta, the oldest of Brandt and Cheryl Gully’s three daughters, and attended Pope High School.
It was the fall semester of her sophomore year when the headaches began. She maintained a busy schedule between schoolwork and running, so Gully assumed high stress was the cause of the headaches. She visited a few neurologists who didn’t find anything awry, but when the pain refused to show mercy, Gully landed in the emergency room at Children’s.
“Christmas break had just ended, and I had only been back to school for a day,” said Gully. “I never imagined I wouldn’t be back in school for a year-and-a-half.”
Bloodwork was done in the ER. The results were life-altering.
“The look on the doctor’s face when he came in, I can’t imagine what’s it’s like for doctors to deliver news like this to kids and their parents,” said Gully.
Leukemia, the doctor said, but they wanted to run more tests to be sure. The subsequent tests confirmed the diagnosis. Gully, less than a year from her sweet 16, had ALL, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to die,’” said Gully. “My knowledge of cancer was limited to watching a grandparent pass from cancer, and I had a grandfather who had cancer at the time. I knew nothing about childhood cancer.”
Gully was admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit immediately. The rest of her family rushed to her side as they grappled with the surreal news.
There was a constant rotation of doctors over the next few days as the course of treatment was mapped out. ALL, the Gullys learned, has a good prognosis and is very treatable with extensive treatment. However, after Gully was admitted to the AFLAC Center for Blood Disorders and Cancer at Scottish Rite, tests showed Gully didn’t just have ALL, she also had AML, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a more difficult cancer to treat. It’s extremely rare to have both cancers at the same time.
She had dreamed of playing lacrosse in the spring and spending time with friends, but instead Gully received chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant. The cancer cells were gone after the transplant, but, just a few days before her 16th birthday, her 100-day post-transplant biopsy results showed cancer cells. She had relapsed.
“It was much harder receiving this news, knowing all I’d have to endure,” said Gully, who stayed at Children’s for six weeks after her spring transplant, her immune system depleted, her body weak. “I knew that relapsing so soon after a transplant was not good. I remember asking my dad what the relapse meant for me, and he said, ‘Peyton, it’s not good.’ Doctors told my parents my chance of survival was just 1 percent. Now I had to go through all the treatments again, knowing full well they might not work. I was 16 and fighting for my life.”
A minimum of eight months is needed between transplants. Gully had her second on Dec. 21, 2017, and endured another long stay in the hospital afterward.
“I lived at the hospital, all my stays ranging from weeks to months. It was truly my home away from home,” said Gully. “I spent Christmas there, New Year’s and I’m able to remember more of the good and happy than the hard and sad. I’m incredibly grateful for that. My friends and family gave me so much support, and all the staff at Children’s went out of their way to make me feel known and cared for.”
Gully was declared cancer free in April 2018. She returned to school her senior year and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a bachelor of science in nursing degree.
“All the health care workers — the social workers, the child life specialists, the sweet woman who cleaned my room every day, the doctors — they all made the biggest impact on me. I knew this is what I wanted to do one day. All of those people are one of the reasons I can look back on the experience and say I wouldn’t change a thing,” said Gully. “I want to serve patients and their families and make them feel as loved and cared for as I felt.”
Gully graduated in May and began her career at Children’s at Scottish Rite as an inpatient rehab nurse on Sept. 18.
“I’m so thankful to be on the other side,” said Gully. “I never forget that my story is not the same as so many others’ and I never want to minimize that. Every experience with illness is different. I’m not walking into this job to share my personal experience. No one needs to remember my name or my story. I just pray my story fuels me to serve with excellence. It will be a privilege to play a part in my patients’ stories.”
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