By Reese Gilcrease
On September 24th of her junior year in high school, 16 year old Morgan Ersoff was diagnosed with Leukemia. She was a varsity athlete for cross country and the soccer team. She ran cross country for two years and played soccer for four years. Her senior year of soccer, she was captain of the team. She had a 4.0 GPA and was in many clubs. She also went to a boarding school for five weeks.
Before she was diagnosed, she was sick for a month and was in the hospital for five days. Morgan was sent to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where she was diagnosed. Her first thought when she was diagnosed was, “Oh my gosh am I gonna live?” After a while, she started becoming really positive throughout it. She described the first phase of her leukemia as the worst one. That’s when she had to have the most chemo, lost her hair, and gained a lot of weight because of the steroids. In between treatments, she said that she didn’t really feel that bad. Also, during this phase, she would eat about six meals a day, that included getting up at 3am and making a full meal.
Morgan described the second phase as a little easier than the first phase. She only had chemo every two weeks for 24 hours. In between the chemo she would feel normal and not really sick. In the third and final phase, her hair started to grow back and she lost a lot of the weight she gained. She explained that she would feel really bad during chemo and would be really tired after. She said once she had ten people visit her in one weekend and she was so tired from it, she slept for two days straight. During her years of battling leukemia, she only stopped playing soccer for about five months before she was back to playing again.
After beating her leukemia, Morgan told me about how she had to have two surgeries due to the steroids damaging her bones. She had to have hip and knee surgery. After her knee surgery, she said she didn’t go back to playing soccer. She stated that her surgeries were “very hard and painful.” During the span of the three years she fought leukemia, she explained that her family would always be there for her. She stated, “they were really supportive and always did everything for me.”
During Morgan’s time at St. Jude she said that it was like living in a hotel. She said the rooms were like hotel rooms. The lobby was like a huge living room. She explained that they also had a full kitchen and would give families $100 a week to buy groceries. During her stay at St. Jude, she also met Justin Timberlake, a big supporter of St. Jude.
When Morgan finally beat leukemia, she felt great, almost like a weight was lifted, but it also brought her some anxiety. She says she is always nervous about it coming back and that she gets kind of paranoid if she feels bad. “Sometimes if I feel sick or something I’ll be like ‘Oh my gosh I have it.’” If it does come back, she plans to do the same as she did last time, try to stay positive and use the people around her for support.
When she was graduating high school, she was selected as valedictorian. She wasn’t really surprised when she was selected, she explained that “I was honored, but it was more like I expected to be it.” She was always a straight A kind of student.
After graduating from Parkway High School, she continued her soccer career for one year at Centenary College of Louisiana. She decided to stop playing after having her knee surgery. While playing that one year, she was a center midfielder, but had to give it up and decided to just focus on her studies.
Now, Morgan Ersoff is a Geometry teacher and an Algebra II teacher here at Captain Shreve. She is also head coach of the girls Junior Varsity soccer team. She is going back to St. Jude to get checked on October 11th and 12th.