Kaylie Mitchell lost her smile in May, when her mother’s cancer diagnosis came.
The Mississippi State University junior was home in Pascagoula, on a break from school. The family ate dinner and everyone was in the living room when her mother asked that the T.V. be turned down.
Melinda Mitchell, a lifelong educator, gathered herself and told her two children she had melanoma, a form of cancer. Treatment, she said, would begin immediately, and the family vowed to remain optimistic.
Kaylie Mitchell is the youngest, the cheerful child, a 20-year-old graphic design major. She took it the hardest. She stayed home during the summer to help her mother and father. Being close felt right.
Then MSU’s fall semester arrived, it was time to move back to Starkville and a sadness settled into Kaylie Mitchell’s usually upbeat personality.
“I couldn’t handle that feeling of helplessness,” she said. “It took me into a dark place.”
So she made a decision.
She would make a website and tell the world about her family’s challenge.
“I realized I couldn’t change the diagnosis,” she said. “But I could change the way I handled the diagnosis.”
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Cancerandmom.com went live on Sept. 15. It features a three-minute and 49-second video of Mitchell talking.
“Hello. My name is Kaylie Mitchell and I am here to tell you a little bit about my mom,” it begins.
She describes her mother and what she means to the people around her. She says the day she learned about her mother’s cancer is one she will not forget. Then she describes the illness: “an aggressive form of melanoma cancer” that has appeared in her mom’s liver and lungs.
Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer. It kills an estimated 9,710 people in the U.S. annually. The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 120,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to skincancer.org.
Yet Mitchell, in an interview with The Dispatch this week, said the disease is one many people remain unaware of. She described it as a “silent killer.”
Mitchell hopes the website and video she made raise awareness, and also makes people see cancer not in terms of statistics, but in terms of the toll it takes on everyday people.
“Cancer is a selfish disease,” Kaylie Mitchell said. “It takes away normalcy…cancer takes and takes and takes from those around you.”
Melinda Mitchell does not have much energy sometimes, but she goes to Gainesville, Florida, every third Monday for treatment.
There is a link on cancerandmom.com that people can click on to donate to Mitchell’s family. The goal was $5,000. Within 23 hours of the site going live, the goal had been exceeded. As of Wednesday, more than $8,000 had been raised.
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Kaylie Mitchell’s nature is to be private. Initially, she worried about revealing so much online. But responses have been positive and steady.
More than 5,800 people have visited cancerandmom.com. It has been shared on social media roughly 1,200 times, according to Hagan Walker, a MSU student who helped create the website.
What Walker is most impressed with, though, is Mitchell’s willingness to put herself and her family’s challenge in the public eye. He described it as “bold.”
“Sometimes it takes a bit of boldness to make the world a better place,” he said.
Mitchell said the website is the most rewarding thing she has done. Almost everyday people approach her on the MSU campus.
Some share personal cancer stories. Some offer prayers. Some just want to let her know they are there for her.
It has helped get Mitchell back on her feet, pushed her out of darkness and let her know, she said, that the website was the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, she calls her mother every day in Pascagoula, and her family keeps the faith.
“There is no other choice,” she said. “There is no wiggle room there. You have to be optimistic.”
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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