Through the long, painful days of chemotherapy treatment, resiliency was born.
Ashley Herndobler was in the depths of treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of her lymphatic system and white blood cells, enduring months of chemotherapy. Herndobler, 19 at the time, lost all of her hair, had to chew ice chips to avoid getting mouth sores, and developed a lung infection that left her bedridden.
But she survived. Realizing her own strength has lifted her up whenever life gets difficult.
“There are days when I feel defeated or when I have a bad day and feel frustrated. But it helps me to look back — I tell myself, you got through cancer, you can get through this. It’s OK to be frustrated, but I’ve been through so much worse. I just have to keep going,” she said. “That’s one of the biggest motivators for me.”
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Herndobler’s experience left a lasting impression on her, one that she’s carrying with her as she enters a new career. Just three years after being diagnosed with cancer, the 22-year-old southside resident has graduated from the University of Indianapolis with a degree from the school’s physical therapist assistant program.
She witnessed the dedication of health care professionals from a patient’s perspective, and wants to use that to make her own lasting impact on the people she treats.
“Even with my patients that I see, a lot of health care workers don’t understand. They haven’t been the patient before, so I feel like me being the patient has really helped with how I treat people,” she said. “It’s made me a better student and medical professional.”
On a sunny summer morning, Herndobler sat outside the gleaming windows of the Health Pavilion on the University of Indianapolis’ campus. The building, which houses the physical therapist assistant program, has been her home away from home for more than three years.
In lecture halls and labs, she became proficient in anatomy, the mechanics of the body, rehabilitation and other foundational aspects of physical therapy. She spent hours pouring over books inside the private study rooms, becoming intimately familiar with the workings of the human body, what can go wrong with it and how to help repair it.
Her final semester was difficult, not only due to the amount of work, but because classes moved online in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I do not like online school at all, so it was interesting to have to learn like that,” she said.
But Herndobler is proud to have emerged from the gauntlet a strong professional and an even stronger person.
“I still love it. I love learning about anatomy, I love working with patients, I love everything about it,” she said.
Looking bad, Herndobler’s success is even more impressive in light of her overcoming cancer. She was diagnosed in 2017, as a freshman at the University of Indianapolis, though her cancer journey started the year before that.
As a high school senior in Valparaiso, she noticed a large, golf-ball sized lump on the side of her neck. Blood tests and scans did not reveal any abnormalities, and her doctor suspected it could be mononucleosis, or a hormonal issue.
The lump persisted through her senior year, and as she enrolled at the University of Indianapolis. She had only been at the school for a few weeks when she developed a minor rash, prompting a trip to the school’s health center.
The nurse who examined her immediately focused on the lump, sending photos of it to Dr. Randall Lee, an internal medicine physician with Community Health Network who also treats students at the university health clinic.
Lee set up a meeting, and ordered blood tests, CT scans, X-rays and a biopsy to determine what the cause of the lump was. Again, blood tests were normal, and the X-rays didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. But the scan and biopsy revealed a worst-case scenario — Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was in Stage 2 of the disease, as the cancer was found in her neck, underarm…