ESTEVAN - Teigha Lesy is continuing her fight against cancer, and has been bolstered by support from the community.
The Grade 11 student at the Estevan Comprehensive School was diagnosed with primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL) in October. She and her family are this year’s beneficiaries from the Victor Elias Memorial Shoot for a Cure tournament hosted by the Estevan Comprehensive School’s senior girls’ basketball team, which started Friday night and wraps up Saturday evening.
She said the treatments have been going well and she is feeling well. She felt humbled when the Elecs asked her if she would accept their support from this year’s tournament.
She undergoes a week of treatment in Saskatoon at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital, and then gets to spend two weeks in Estevan.
“She did six rounds of intense chemotherapy. And now we’re in the follow-up stages; … we’re finished the initial planned scheduled treatments, and now we wait. Next week we go to see the follow-up of how things are going, if it did its job,” said her father, Dustin Lesy.
“There’s no real reason to make us believe it hasn’t been working. All signs are pointing positive, but we don’t really know until … we get the actual pet scan results.”
Those results are expected shortly.
Teigha Lesy didn’t know anyone from the basketball team before she was selected to benefit from the tournament, but now she has more friends. Kylie Phillipchuk, who is the lone Grade 12 on this year’s team, made a presentation to the Lesys and gave her a big hug during the opening ceremonies before the Elecs played the Weyburn Comprehensive School Eagles Friday evening.
She noted her best friend is on the cheerleader team, who were present to provide energy during Friday’s game.
During the opening ceremonies, Lesy and her family were introduced to the crowd, and some brief information was shared. A couple members of the Elecs, as well as head coach Jessie Smoliak, said they were playing for Lesy this weekend.
The support from the community has been excellent, they said. There’s been a lot of attention they’re not used to, but the community has rallied around them.
“There’s a lot of rough stuff going on in the world, and when you feel like you’ve lost almost all faith in humanity, something like this comes around, and the support from the school and the community in general makes you very proud to be where you’re from,” said Dustin.
Dustin said Teigha and the family like to keep to themselves. They’re ‘very thankful” that people wanted to help them out.
