Andrea's Story

At the age of 16, Andrea Coggins was in the best shape of her young life, thanks to a high-intensity dance program that required her to dance three hours a day, five days a week. When she started feeling severe hip pain, the natural conclusion was that it was related to her dancing, not to its real cause -- non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

When Andrea first met Memorial Sloan-Kettering pediatric oncologist Tanya Trippett, she needed to be given medication to relieve her pain before an official diagnosis could be made.