Formed in 1980, the Make-A-Wish Foundation provides life changing experiences for children with critical illnesses.
Some children want to meet celebrities—professional wrestler John Cena is more than just the WWE record holder with 13 title reigns, he is also the undisputed Make-A-Wish champion with more than 500 wishes granted.
Some want to travel, with Walt Disney World a popular choice.
Some want life experiences—think Miles Scott, who, with the help of Make-A-Wish and the city of San Francisco, became “Batkid” for a day in 2013.
Carson Cooney, though, wanted something different.
She wanted to be a University of Oregon student.
Before her eighth grade year in school, Cooney moved from Kansas City to Las Vegas. After arriving in Las Vegas she began feeling unwell, stressed out with excessive thirst. Doctors originally chalked her symptoms up to the stress associated with moving, but a doctor at the Cure for Kids Specialty Center conducted a spinal tap and discovered the problem.
Cooney had a brain tumor.
“It was on my pituitary gland, which is very rare,” she said. “It happens in one in a million kids, and usually they are younger kids. [The doctors] were very confused as to what was happening.”
Cooney went through a year of chemotherapy, spending five days each month in a hospital undergoing treatment. She cut her hair short to make it less noticeable that some was falling out, and her weight yo-yoed. She tried to live as normal a life as possible, but found it difficult to keep up with schoolwork and friends while spending so much time in the hospital, and at times even went to school with the IV needle still in her arm so that she could keep up.
Her grades even suffered—slightly.
“In middle school I always had straight As and a 4.0 GPA,” Cooney said. “All of a sudden, when this happened, I tried my best but I still only got a 3.5 GPA. Even going through that, I’m guess I’m proud of my little 14-year-old self for doing that. It was pretty tough.”
Make-A-Wish contacted her and asked her what she would like to do. However, there was a problem: she had no idea.
“At first, I wanted to go to Australia and see the Great Barrier Reef, or go to a koala sanctuary and help out with them, because Australia is cool,” Cooney said. “But then I thought of Japan. My mom’s idea was having tea with the Queen.”
Other ideas included a shopping spree in New York, or meeting the singer Hozier.
“I literally had no idea what I wanted to do,” said Cooney. “[Make-A-Wish was] very patient with me, because I just kept changing my mind over and over again.”
While she kept going back and forth, deciding between koalas and Hozier, she was also looking for a university to attend.
She wanted a good biology program with a pre-veterinary program, and wanted something completely different from Kansas City and Las Vegas. She traveled all over the country looking at schools, narrowing her list down to Colorado State University and the University of Oregon, and ultimately decided upon the UO.
“I just feel really at home here,” said Cooney. “It’s so different from everything. I like the trees, I like walking through campus—even on the tour I felt very at home.
“I liked the campus so much better, and I felt so much more welcomed here than in Colorado. Just walking around, everyone was super nice; people are just nicer here.”
With one major life decision taken care of, that made the other—her outstanding Make-A-Wish—a little simpler to sort out.
“I wanted to help out my mom as much as possible,” said Cooney. “She’s been there for me through a lot of stuff, so I wanted to help her, I really love this school, and I value education a lot. So, I just thought this was the best decision I could make: get a scholarship to fund my education to do what I love to do.”
Cooney isn’t the only Make-A-Wish kid to pick college tuition over other life experiences, but much like her particular cancer was rare, her choice was also uncommon.
“This past fiscal year, Carson was one of two wish children to choose an education or scholarship type of wish,” said Abby LeGrand, senior wish specialist at Make-A-Wish Southern Nevada. “Over the past three fiscal years, we have had three wishes to have a college scholarship out of 359 wishes total.”
In August, Cooney was presented with a check to cover her first term of tuition at a ceremony attended by representatives of the Vegas Ducks chapter. She joined the Vegas Ducks again on September 7 for the Oregon Migration event to farewell new UO students from Las Vegas before they headed to Eugene.
After that, it was on to Oregon.
With the cancer now firmly behind her—Cooney is in remission, with no chance of relapse—she can focus fully on being a normal UO student. A budding veterinarian, Cooney wants to one day work with exotic animals; like her potential wishes she has trouble narrowing the list down, and names horses, tigers, and elephants among the mammals she hopes to one day work with. Her math classes are a chore, and she is itching to get to the science classes that are on the horizon.
Once the fall term started she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and spends her Saturdays in Autzen Stadium and the rest of her time exploring her new home.
“It’s been an adventure,” she said. “I love just walking on the campus every day. My classes are really spread out, so I have breaks in between to go off and do my own thing, like go to the library and study, go to the rec center, or just really figure out everything on campus and use everything wisely. There’s so much to offer here.”
- Damian Foley, UO Communications