Megan is an outgoing 6 year old with tons of personality! She loves life and lives it like she owns the world. 

Megan started vomiting on and off, maybe 2-3 times a week and then was getting worse when she would wake up. Her family - her parents and older sister, Maggie - had just recently moved to Florida and they hadn't even found a doctor for her yet. They found a new one and she was diagnosed with strep. The next day, she was still throwing up, so they went to another doctor who sent them to children’s hospital the next day for an MRI. After 2.5 hours, the doctor came out to discuss her diagnosis – medulloblastoma -and within a half hour Megan went into surgery to remove a tumor at just 2 years old. Megan went through six rounds of chemo with a stem cell recovery transplant during the last three rounds.

Then, at age 4, her cancer relapsed. Once again, surgery successfully took out Megan's tumor before she went through 33 rounds of radiation to complete treatment. Today, nearly 1.5 years after her radiation finished, she is as spunky as ever. 

Megan is her parents, Jeannine and Joe’s, hero because she went through all of this with such grace! She never complained and enjoyed her hospital time - she loved the toys! But being so little and having no idea what was really going on, she just lived life to the fullest! Her family did everything and enjoyed every day in and out of the hospital with her. 

Jeannine and Joe want other families who may have received a cancer diagnosis to know that there is an end in sight. Stay strong and try to be as active as possible with your child. Show them how to be strong! They overcame this disease with the prayers and support of family, friends and strangers. They are so grateful to the care team at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital and would want any family facing this to have the same level of support they had. 

Information provided by Jeannine Walejko, Megan’s Mother
Updated: January 2019