00:00My disease is called osteosarcoma, and it's a bone cancer.
00:05It's very serious.
00:16My mom was shocked when she found out.
00:18And I was still in shock when I called to tell her the news.
00:21I said, you're not going to believe this, but it's true.
00:23I just got asked to go to space.
00:30I was a healthy 10-year-old before this diagnosis, and I was really active.
00:42I actually had just gotten my black belt in taekwondo.
00:45And I was having knee pain.
00:47They thought it was from the taekwondo, but the pain started getting worse,
00:50and I started limping.
00:52The doctor took an X-ray, and she came in the room with my parents and said,
00:56this is bone cancer.
00:58And we all just burst into tears.
01:01And I just kept saying over and over, I don't want to die.
01:03I don't want to die.
01:04I'm trying to lift my leg like my right leg, but I can't do that yet
01:11because my muscle isn't strong enough.
01:14I spent a year undergoing intense chemo and also had surgery that saved my leg
01:19and ultimately saved my life.
01:21I look back, and I think of the good memories.
01:23I was pulling pranks on my doctors and nurses.
01:26I was throwing dance parties and made everyone in the hospital come watch me
01:30and my friend dance.
01:31At the end of my treatment, when my doctor told me I was cancer-free
01:34and I could go home, I cried because I didn't want to leave.
01:50I'm not nervous at all.
01:52I think I'll have butterflies on launch day, but as of now, I'm not nervous.
01:56Immediately, I said yes.
02:20Just recognizing how once in a lifetime this opportunity was
02:24and what an incredible fundraiser it would be for St. Jude.
02:27I actually went to NASA the summer before I was diagnosed with cancer.
02:30I mean, every kid looks at that and wants to be an astronaut.
02:33Who doesn't?
02:42We're going to be going 17,500 miles an hour,
02:45and so we're going to get such an incredible view of so much of the Earth.
02:55So we will be doing some science experiments and some research.
02:59So I'm actually going to draw blood from my crew members.
03:03What I'm most excited about is we're going to call the St. Jude patients from space.
03:07They'll be able to see someone who was in their shoes,
03:10who was walking the same halls they walked,
03:12and I think it's going to give them hope.
03:14Right now, we're doing a lot of studying.
03:16We've been sent a lot of materials to become really familiar with our spacecraft
03:20and the mission and what we're going to be doing there.
03:22And intermittently, we're having in-person training as well.
03:35What's so exciting about it is we're the first all-civilian mission to space,
03:40and just knowing that there's going to be so many that come after us.
03:44Being the first person with a prosthetic body part
03:47is really going to help open space travel to so many more people.
03:50Because until this mission, you really had to be physically perfect to go to space.
03:54But this mission is changing things, and I'm personally really excited to be part of that.
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