Just one year after moving to Boston at the ripe age of 24, Aylat was hit with a life changing diagnosis: a rare sarcoma called Angiosarcoma that they believed began in her heart and spread to her brain and bones. Aylat went from one day of orientation for a new job in a school as an assistant teacher to a world of doctors, hospitals, and the uncertainty of if there would ever be an end to treatment. We were told that this is a very aggressive cancer and needed to be treated aggressively and would probably be on treatment for the rest of her life. Aylat went through a surgery that led to the diagnosis and then chemotherapy and multiple types of radiation. 

Now, 5 whole years since stopping treatments, Aylat still has no evidence of disease and is working to grow her voice in advocacy for sarcomas and young adult cancer patients/survivors and is raising funds to support research for this rare disease. Everyone always wants to be special but when you are suddenly 1% of 1% in a medical setting that kind of rare and special is not great and does not get the financial support needed to further research and education to allow for a better quality of life and probability of survival for those patients that hear those words "you have a rare cancer."

Aylat's 5-year survival chances were very low, yet here she is today, thriving in the field she always wanted to work in and trying to make the most of each day. Please consider donating, even as small as just $5 in honor of 5 years, to help other sarcoma patients have the chance at another 5 years of life.