Recent college grad gets degree in four years, on top of battling cancer

VERNON, Ala. (WCBI) – Graduating college in four years can be a challenge of its own, but can you imagine doing that, on top of battling cancer?

Well, one young Alabama woman did just that, last month.

Ashley Vann graduated this past May, from Birmingham-Southern College.

She was diagnosed with skin cancer when she was in high-school, and spent her college years balancing classes and chemo, but she didn’t let her battle with cancer stop her from achieving her dreams.

“It was weird at first, especially, when I first lost my hair because I was worried, you know, people may ask me about it, but everyone still treated me like normal. Especially, all of my friends and everything, no one really brought it up, so that was nice.”

Ashley Vann, 22, has been battling a rare form of cancer for almost six years.

It’s called Basal Cell Nevus Syndrome and is related to skin cancer.

It only affects one out of every 60,000 people.

“The syndrome can make me more vulnerable to get any other types of cancer, so he keeps me going to like the eye doctor and cardiologist, and urologist, and everything to make sure nothing worrying comes up with that.”

She was diagnosed her junior year of high-school, but it actually started when she was in the first grade.

Then, in her sophomore year of college, the chemo started.

“Before then, I was just going like every three months and he would actually do surgery to remove them and usually, he was finding like three spots every time I went, which is why we finally started me on the medicine.”

On top of hours of school work, she juggled doctor appointments, treatments, and working every weekend.

“Sometimes, it would get to me because of how many I’ve had, so just the stress of that and not knowing really what to do, like if I wanted to have them surgically removed, or going back on the medicine, that would just get me kind of down sometimes.”

Ashley said her family, friends, dog, and prayers are always there to pick her back up.

“Stay strong. Definitely lean on the people there you have to support you and I’ve always just tried to use it too, to help spread awareness and try to find other people out there to let them know they’re not alone.”

Ashley got her degree in Psychology and hopes to work with children with autism or cancer.

“I also just recently applied to Children’s at Birmingham, going to work with children going through cancer, so I’m really hoping maybe to get that position, or a position similar to that too, because I feel like maybe I can really relate and help them with everything that I’ve been through.”

Ashley says since there is no cure for her cancer, she just treats the cancerous spots as they appear.

She says she’s had about 26 spots removed, so far.