After noticing some symptoms including fatigue, a low-grade fever, a few paper cuts that were failing to heal and frequent bruising from mid-August to mid-September last year, Cincotta consulted her pediatrician who referred her to the ER. There, on September 17, Cincotta was diagnosed with AML.

“I was quite annoyed. I didn’t really think of it as a life-threatening thing, but as a time-consuming thing,” Cincotta said.

AML is a type of blood cancer in which immature bone marrow cells develop abnormally, causing them to continuously build up. This type of cancer can quickly become fatal if it’s not treated early on. Possible treatment options for AML include chemotherapy, radiation and bone marrow transplants, and Cincotta was treated by chemotherapy.

Cincotta explained that she was able to stay more positive than most adults anticipated during treatment by maintaining a good sense of humor.

“A lot of the doctors and nurses didn’t know how to talk to me because they didn’t know if I was going to break down crying about it, but I never took the whole cancer thing seriously,” Cincotta said. “I just kept making cancer jokes throughout the whole entire treatment.”

It was this mentality that allowed Cincotta to stay positive. Cincotta also believes her state-of-mind as a teenager was able to help her maintain a hopeful attitude during treatment.

“When you’re a kid you don’t imagine yourself dying,” Cincotta said. “So it was just kind of that thing where I was like, ‘I’m too young to die.’”

While in the hospital, Cincotta tried to make the best of her situation by relaxing. She passed time by going on the Internet, watching different TV box sets that she received as gifts, such as Friends and Seinfeld, and making art when she felt well enough.

“I took the cancer time as a nice vacation to detox from everyone at school. I took it as me time,” Cincotta said.

Although Cincotta had a hopeful attitude, she did experience challenges along the way. She reported that the biggest obstacle she faced was when her lung got infected with pneumonia after she finished chemotherapy. Cincotta was placed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for a week and a half when she had two tubes in her lungs and was taking various pain medications.

“The ICU is scary because you can’t leave the room and you have no sense of night and day, so that’s kind of eerie,” Cincotta said. “That sucked because that was when I felt actually crappy.”

After her bout in the ICU, Cincotta also had to work to become strong again. She had to relearn how to walk after spending such a long period of time in bed without eating much.

Returning to WHS this spring after her recovery was a dramatic transition for Cincotta. After being able to take it easy when she wasn’t suffering from chemotherapy or other complications, she had to adjust back into the routine of doing school work.

“It was like coming back from a really long summer,” Cincotta said. “I mean the school was very accommodating, definitely, which was awesome, but it was weird being told to actually do work after being in the hospital where I get babied and everybody does things for me.”

Besides, schoolwork, Cincotta also had to transition back into interacting with her teachers and peers upon her return to WHS. She felt that the way some students and teachers treated her had changed from before she had left.

“The teachers treated me like a saint or like I did something fabulous. Most of the students I think treated me the same. Some students avoided me because they felt awkward,” Cincotta said.

Cincotta remains positive about her experience with leukemia even looking back on her treatment.

“It wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be. I would rather go through all that chemo than find out I had cancer four months later and die, so it was worth it.”