SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Edmonds teen battling cancer an inspiration to family, friends, and an Olympian
Mar 23, 2019, 9:05 AM | Updated: 9:33 am
Edmonds-Woodway High School student Emily Hood is facing what no teenager should have to deal with: an inoperable tumor on her brain stem, but her strength in coping has been an inspiration to her family and the community. Wrestling is a big part of that.
“Wrestling has given me a mental toughness,” she told The Dori Monson Show. “It started as a joke, because I was hanging out with one of my friends who wrestles, and I met all the wrestlers, and they were really nice, and were like, ‘Emily, you should join.'”
The 17-year-old then asked her mom if she could wrestle, and her mom was all for it. As time went on she began to notice issues during wrestling, reports My Edmond News.
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“It’s tough, like during wrestling matches the world would be spinning kind of,” she said. “I thought I had a concussion, but I went to a neurologist and had an MRI, and it turned out not to be a concussion, but a brain tumor on my brain stem, that effects my balance and stuff, and coordination.”
“With this kind of tumor, you don’t know until you know. There’s not really a way to tell that you have something wrong with you until you really show symptoms.”
After the diagnosis Emily began regular radiation treatments. The whole experience has taken a physical toll. Half of her face is paralyzed, her balance is off, and an eye-patch conceals a turned-in eye.
“My eyes work fine, they just don’t work well together, and I’m a little wobbly, and I can’t really feel half of my face,” she said. “But other than that I feel normal. I don’t feel like I have a brain tumor, if that makes sense, because I’ve kind of been wobbly since November, so it kind of just has become normal for me.”
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Still, she’s remained positive as a result of her faith, her family and friends, and a recent surprise from an Olympian. She got a FaceTime call from Helen Maroulis, the first American to win gold in women’s wrestling at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil.
“I started freaking out,” she told My Edmonds News. “Oh my gosh, what do I do? My mom said, ‘Answer it.’”
Along with the call, the Olympian will be travelling to Emily’s high school to give a wrestling clinic as part of a fundraiser for her, and the two of them will be hanging out as well.
To help Emily’s family with her medical bills, head to her GoFundMe.
