NORTH TONAWANDA, NY – This past Saturday found Stella Usiak, a teenager whose battled leukemia for most of her life, kicking it in a hotel room high above Toronto, where she was about to go see Taylor Swift, whose artistry has served as an inspiration to Stella in her battle.
The concert was something she’d long looked forward to.
“This is just the only thing that makes her happy,” said Stella’s mother, Jennifer. “We paid for these tickets as a Christmas gift for her.”
However, just a half hour before she and her mom were about to make their way one block to the Rogers Center to see the concert, Stella, while seated, crossed one leg over the other in an attempt to scratch an itch on the bottom of her foot.
“I heard the sound of her leg breaking, like a very dry branch,” said Mrs. Usiak.
Stella’s femur, weakened by her treatments, snapped.
“She said, ‘I’m still gonna try to go’, but as her leg started to swell, the pressure became too much. She gave up and said ‘I can’t go,'” Mrs Usiak said.
Instead of going to the concert, Stella was off to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto for surgery, where she is expected to have to stay for several more days.
Meanwhile, back in Western New York, the parents of some other childhood cancer patients heard about what happened.
While they can’t ease the disappointment Stella felt, and still feels, about having missed the concert, they hatched a plan to help ease the family’s return to Western New York.
“Talking to her mom and texting back and forth, we knew it was gonna be very hard to get her back into the house and it was a concern of theirs,” said Maureen Warren, whose son Lucas, 15, was diagnosed with Leukemia around the same time Stella was.
Lucas and Stella have been close friends ever since.
Warren, her husband, and a group of other so called “Cancer Parents” decided to build a wheelchair ramp on the front of the Usiak residence. They set to work on Sunday evening and expect to have it finished before the Usiak family returns.
“We’ve been battling this together nonstop, her and me,” said Lucas, 15. “We’ve been next to each other neck and neck…this is gonna be a long road so whatever she needs, we’ll get her.”
“It’s just something that just had to be done,” Lucas' mother added.
Mrs. Usiak, who said Stella was still awaiting surgery Monday evening, reported that, “Stella got the biggest smile,” when she heard about the ramp.
“I mean you’d think that that was her Christmas gift - getting a wheelchair ramp to get her back into the house. I don’t know how three parents with kids in treatment at Roswell, with full time jobs, were able to do this. We’re blown away,” Usiak said.